Voting centers bringing technology upgrade to Clark County elections

On election days in 2018, Las Vegas Valley voters will have to travel no more than 2 miles to cast a ballot.

That’s because Clark County will implement voting centers by the primary election in June 2018. The technology allows voters to cast a valid ballot at any polling location inside Clark County, not just their local precincts.

“It’s (like) early voting on Election Day,” County Registrar of Voters Joe Gloria said during a presentation on Monday night. “You don’t have to race across town at 5 o’clock to get to the voting place designated for you. You can stop anywhere.”

County Commissioners voted in April to spend about $1.57 million to implement the new method of voting on Election Day. Las Vegas, Henderson, North Las Vegas and Boulder City used voting centers in their 2017 municipal elections.

Although the voting centers will mostly replicate the early voting experience the county has provided since 1994, there are plans to roll out some new tricks in 2018.

For example, the county plans to update its election department webpage on Election Day with a real-time estimate of polling place wait times. Also, voters will sign into a polling location using a tablet computer.

Each polling place will have no fewer than 20 voting machines and some will likely have upwards of 40, Gloria said.

So far, the county has mapped out preliminary locations for 160 voting centers, which equates to approximately one site for every 6,000 registered voters.

Sites selected so far include some popular early voting sites like shopping malls and grocery stores, but Gloria said the county is open to adding sites or changing site locations based on need through autumn.

Because voting centers hinge on electronic poll book technology, Gloria said real-time data such when and where a voter cast a ballot will be available to the public online.

Every variety of ballot will be available at each polling place, so there will be no more mail-only precincts. The number of provisional ballots cast in each election should fall sharply.

Gloria said he expects tighter voting security.

“We’re doing it on a much larger scale, but we’ll be using the same safety measures we’ve taken in the past” for early voting, Gloria said. “The integrity of the data is actually safer electronically than it would be on paper.”

Contact Michael Scott Davidson at sdavidson@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3861. Follow @davidsonlvrj on Twitter.