Voting lines stretched to three hours in Las Vegas on election day

Voters in Southern Nevada waited in line for nearly three hours to cast their ballots after polls officially closed on Tuesday, as results were expected to trickle in much later than past election years.

Just before 9:50 p.m., 23 polling locations in Clark County still had people waiting to vote, according to Clark County spokesperson Stephanie Wheatley. That number dropped to 11 by 10:10 p.m.

Earlier in the evening, county spokesperson Jennifer Cooper said officials were attributing long lines to higher voter turnout numbers, a two-page ballot with many races and a new voting process for in-person voting.

This year, voters made their selections on an electronic voting machine that then printed out a paper ballot with the voter’s selections. Voters then had to feed that paper ballot through a tabulation machine to record their vote.

The Associated Press had not called any Nevada races as of the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s print deadline, several hours after polls closed at 7 p.m. Anyone waiting in line at that time was able to cast their ballot.

Nevada also allows for same-day, in person registration, which requires voters registering for the first time to provide a state ID card or proof of residence.

Longest lines at UNLV

Some of the longest wait times reported to the Review-Journal were at UNLV, where voters were waiting up to 3½ hours on Tuesday afternoon, according to voter Alicia Harris.

She left the campus’s lengthy line after waiting for up to 90 minutes without moving. Harris said she and her partner, Shaun Harris, opted to vote at Allegiant Stadium instead, which took them about 40 minutes.

Shaun Harris said nearly all of the people waiting to vote at UNLV appeared to be college students, and he said the long wait could have been because of the high number of first-time voters requiring provisional ballots.

Alicia Harris said she was happy with the turnout at the college, despite her fruitless wait.

“It was really awesome to see those students doing their civic duty,” she said.

At Ellis Elementary School in Henderson, 64-year-old Debbie Jordan said she waited nearly three hours to vote and didn’t leave the building until around 8:30 p.m.

Jordan, who lives just a few blocks away, had been excited when she first heard the school would become a polling place. For her, the wait was a small price to pay for voting close to home, and it gave her a chance to catch up with neighbors.

“We had such a great time chit-chatting with all my neighbors,” she said. “Hopefully, next year they’ll expand this location, but really, everything worked out perfectly.”

Paul Lee, 63, complained about the wait time after he emerged from voting at Las Vegas City Hall.

He offered a novel suggestion.

“Maybe they could put a couple slot machines in here. That’d be nice,” Lee said. “This is Vegas.”

Wait times exceed official estimates

On Tuesday afternoon, more than 50 voting centers showed wait times of 40 to 60 minutes, according to a Clark County live polling website. But Review-Journal reporters witnessed several voting locations with wait times beyond an hour.

Waits stretched up to two hours at Las Vegas City Hall and spots in Henderson, such as Coronado High School and Green Valley High School.

Katherine Teran, 26, said she waited in line for about two hours at the IKEA store in the southwest Las Vegas Valley.

Teran has voted in prior elections and said this year was “a little bit slower,” and the inside of the polling place was “hectic.”

“So, you have to wait for these two printout papers, and then you go to another printer, and I guess you turn it in there,” Teran said, describing the process.

The last voter was seen entering the polling location in the Ikea parking lot at 9:20 p.m.

The line at Silverado Ranch Community Center snaked around the park’s courtyard, hundreds of people deep on Tuesday night. As 7 p.m. approached, drivers frantically circled the parking lot in search of an open spot.

The county’s online database estimated a one-hour wait at the polling place, but Jaydenn Kotch, 20, said she stood in line for an hour and a half.

She hadn’t seen any broken equipment or technical snags. Her theory was simpler: not enough machines. Kotch said 30 machines lined a narrow corridor, with two dedicated to provisional voters. Four tabulation machines sat at the end of the hall.

“This area is so huge,” Kotch said. “There simply are not enough machines to serve so many people efficiently.”

Lines remain after polls close

A long but shrinking line still wrapped around the Desert Breeze Community Center after polls closed at 7 p.m.

Leya Dow, 20, said she got off work at 6:30 p.m. and arrived at the center at around 6:45 p.m. after checking another nearby polling place and seeing a long line there.

“I was like, OK, I’m just going to get in line,” said Dow, who added she was motivated to turn out because young people like her have to live with the decisions made by policymakers.

The first precinct delivered ballots to the Clark County Election Department headquarters just before 8:15 p.m. The votes came from the Clark County Detention Center, which collects ballots from people able to vote while they are in custody.

Small waves of ballot boxes from other locations didn’t start arriving at the election department warehouse until at least 90 minutes after polls closed.

People were still in line to vote when the Review-Journal reached its print deadline, and results had yet to be posted anywhere in Nevada.

Nevada does not allow preliminary election results to be released until every voter in line by the poll closing deadline has cast their ballot.

Contact Katelyn Newberg at [email protected] or 702-383-0240. Staff writers Casey Harrison, Emerson Drewes, Akiya Leggio, Spencer Levering, Noble Brigham and Mick Akers contributed to this report.