VICTOR JOECKS: Wisconsin shows Nevada how to count votes quickly

There doesn’t have to be a trade-off between voter turnout and timely election results. Just look at Wisconsin.

On Tuesday, many in the political world expected socialist Francesca Hong to easily win Wisconsin’s Democrat gubernatorial primary. Polls showed her up by double digits over David Crowley, who serves as the executive of Milwaukee County. On July 8, Crowley had even dropped out before re-entering the race with the endorsement of Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers.

It seemed as if the DSA’s rampage through the rudderless Democrat Party would continue. Then the election results came in. Crowley wasn’t just coming in a close second. He had a small lead over Hong and kept it as more votes came in. Both candidates ended up with around 40 percent of the vote, but Crowley stayed ahead.

In Nevada, the next move would be obvious. Go to bed and wait. You wouldn’t know the winner of an election this close for several days. In Nevada’s 2022 Senate race, The Associated Press didn’t declare Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto the winner until the Saturday after the election. In California, it can take even longer to learn the final result. Just ask Spencer Pratt.

This delay didn’t happen in Wisconsin. About three hours after the polls closed, officials had counted more than 90 percent of the estimated votes. Less than five and a half hours after the polls closed, officials had counted 99 percent of the votes. Decision Desk called the race for Crowley, even with an odd mishap involving Milwaukee County and USB drives. Crowley won by half of a percentage point, or about 4,000 votes.

The reason Wisconsin returned results so quickly is that the state requires municipal clerks to receive absentee ballots by 8 p.m. on election night. This means that ballots aren’t trickling in through the mail days after the election.

Nevada could do this too, but Democrats, led by Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, aren’t interested. “I think I lean toward ‘let’s be accessible,’” Aguilar said in a 2022 interview on this issue. He has repeated that “accessible” talking point during his tenure.

Nevada’s “progressive voter access laws” help “ensure that all voters — no matter where they work or what hours they keep — can have access to the ballot box,” Aguilar said when Nevada Democrats were attempting to get national Democrats to select Nevada as the first state to hold a Democrat presidential primary.

If this argument were true, Nevada should have had much higher turnout than Wisconsin. Nevada voters have longer to return mail ballots, and Nevada sends mail ballots to every active registered voter. Wisconsin voters have to request a mail ballot and have a witness sign their ballot envelope.

In June, Nevada’s primary had 21 percent turnout. In Wisconsin’s primary, turnout was around 36 percent. There’s more. In 2018 — before Nevada had universal mail ballots — its primary turnout was almost 23 percent.

There are lots of factors in election turnout, but one takeaway should be obvious: It’s demonstrably false to claim that making voting accessible requires long delays in finding out the results of close races.