Republicans continue to benefit from late ballot returns
The long-standing election rule that Democrats vote early and Republicans vote late appears to be once again proving to be correct, at least in Clark County.
In the two tightest local races in the general election, Republicans Vicki Kraft and Karen Bowerman have each overcome Tuesday night deficits to their respective opponents as the Clark County Elections Department continues to count ballots from the election.
In the race for state representative, position No. 1 in the 17th Legislative District, the incumbent has erased the 1,162-vote lead of Democrat challenger Tanisha Harris. Kraft had trimmed Harris’ lead to 869 votes after Wednesday’s report. When Thursday’s report was issued just after 5 p.m., Kraft had moved in front of Harris by 482 votes (38,691 to 38,209) Kraft has 50.31 percent of the votes and Harris has 49.69 percent. Two years ago, Kraft defeated Harris by just 859 votes.
In the race for the Clark County Council District 3 position, Democrat Jesse James had an advantage of 1,110 votes over Bowerman Tuesday night. Bowerman cut that lead to just 216 votes on Wednesday. On Thursday, Bowerman moved in front and is now leading James by 723 votes (26,952 to 26,229). Bowerman has 50.68 percent and James is at 49.32 percent.
On Tuesday night, the first set of returns included the results of 220,476 ballots of Clark County’s 324,642 registered voters. Wednesday’s results added the counting of 16,342 more votes and Thursday’s batch included another 20,883 ballots for a total of 257,701 counted thus far.
On Thursday morning, Auditor Greg Kimsey told Clark County Today that his current estimate was there were about 40,000 more ballots to be counted between now and when the general election will be certified on Nov. 24. Kimsey indicated that 35,000 of those ballots should be counted by the end of the day on Friday, which would indicate that about 15,000 ballots could be counted before Friday’s 5 p.m. report.
