A Nevada state Senate committee has introduced legislation that would eliminate early voting on Sundays and restrict counties’ abilities to set their own voting hours, in the latest move to reshape how elections are held in the state. Senate Bill 433 was introduced on Monday by the Nevada Senate Committee on Legislative Operations and Elections. Under the terms of the bill, voting on Sundays during the early voting period ahead of next year’s elections would no longer be allowed, and counties would no longer be able to keep their polls open beyond 7 p.m. Previously, polling sites in areas like Clark County, which contains Las Vegas, had kept polls open until 9 p.m. State Sen. Patricia Farley (R), who chairs the committee that introduced the early voting legislation, and state Sen. James Settelmeyer (R), the committee’s vice chair, did not respond to a request for comment from The Huffington Post about why they introduced the bill.
If the law passes the Republican-controlled state legislature and is signed by Gov. Brian Sandoval (R), Nevada would remove itself from the group of nine states — Alaska, Illinois, Ohio, Maryland, California, Florida, Georgia, Nevada and Massachusetts — that have Sunday voting or that leave it up to county clerks to choose whether facilities will be open on Sundays.
Yvanna Cancela, the political director of the Culinary Union 226, which represents more than 55,000 employees on the Las Vegas strip and at the city’s airport, called Senate Bill 433 an intentional effort to suppress the votes of the union’s members.
“This is a deliberate attempt to make it harder for people to vote, and specifically in Nevada, in Las Vegas, where there is a 24-hour economy, it is not like in other cities where most people work 9-to-5 jobs,” Cancela told HuffPost. “If you look at our people, like the gaming industry workers, this would dramatically affect their ability to vote based on their work schedule.”
Full Article: Nevada GOP Moves To Limit Early Voting On Sundays, Weeknight Evenings.