Monday is the third day of early voting in Nevada. Statewide, 44,818 people have voted in-person during the first three days. Mail-in ballots are also off to a very strong start, with Nevadans casting 175,938 paper ballots. Out of Washoe County's 301,430 active voters, 57,767 mail ballots have been returned and 13,455 people have voted early. 23 percent of Washoe County residents have voted and 12 percent of Nevadans have voted.
"Extremely strong turnout," Deanna Spikula, Washoe County Registrar of Voters said. "Very, very happy to see people participating and our early voting locations and our drop-off locations are also busy."
Washoe County has received 623 ballots with signature issues. Either they did not have a signature, the signature did not match, or the entire signature panel was missing from the envelope. Spikula says each of those voters will be able to correct the problem.
"Today, letters will be going out to the majority of those voters," Spikula said.
Those voters will have three options to correct the signature problems. They can use a mobile app to scan their driver's license or identification card, sign an affidavit form, or prove identity by verifying specific questions.
Since every active voter was supposed to receive an absentee ballot, the numbers are already more than they were in 2018, when there were 19,186 mail ballots.
Early voting is typically the most popular way to vote. After three days, approximately 2,000 more people have voted in-person than during the same time frame in 2018. There are 15 polling locations in Washoe County. Many of them have long wait times including some that reached two hours, Monday. Some waited in line at the Northwest Reno Library for about an hour.
"It's worth it though," Kathy Tague, Reno resident said. "I'd wait all day to vote for him."
"I checked the website, the app to find out how long the wait was and said that this was an acceptable length of time," Petrina McCarty-Puhl said. "I brought some water. I'm doing good."
Washoe County has an app that shows how long each location's approximate wait time is. While some smaller locations had long lines, the larger ones like Lawlor Events Center and the Reno-Sparks Convention Center did not have a wait at all.
Washoe County
The convention center is considered a super site. It has 56 voting machines. Poll workers say the Reno Town Mall had about a 40-minute wait. The convention center is right across the street, where voters finished voting within 5-10 minutes.
"This is a new site this cycle so a lot of people don't know," Richard James, Poll Manager at the Reno-Sparks Convention Center said. "They're not familiar with having come here in the past, and two: a lot of folks who have made it over here thought 'Oh we thought you had to pay to park.'"
The Reno-Sparks Convention Center has lots of space. Parking is free.
Voters are encouraged to use the larger sites, if possible. They have more space for social distancing and more space.
"The social distancing, we keep people apart," James said. "We don't let them in unless there's enough space. Our observers are 10 feet apart and it's a lot of volume. The air is moving."
Counties can begin counting votes, now that the election is within 15 days out. Spikula says her office will not start that process until next week. For now, the focus is opening the ballots and processing them. She says the scanning process is very fast. During the primary election, her office counted more than 90,000 ballots in four days.
