Nevada Democratic volunteer raises concerns with caucus plans

The name and face of Seth Morrison, a 68-year-old Las Vegas retiree, has been plastered on TV and computer screens this week as he’s actively voiced concerns over the Nevada State Democratic Party’s contingency plan for its caucuses, which began with early voting last weekend and will conclude on Saturday.

In an interview with the Review-Journal, Morrison said he sought to bring his concerns over the party’s caucus plans into the open to spur the party into sharing more information and being more open with the public, which he said he’s accomplished.

“I thought it was better to expose these issues before the caucus than have everyone be surprised,” Morrison said.

But Morrison decided not to serve as a volunteer site leader with the party after being asked to sign a nondisclosure agreement on Friday, he said.

“I showed up to pick up my materials (Friday) morning, and they said I could not be a site leader without signing an NDA,” he said.

The agreement would bar Morrison from speaking to the news media and, in his reading of it, allow the party to sue him if he said anything negative.

Morrison said he was open to signing an NDA, given the sensitive information he would be handling as the leader of six precincts at Legacy High School, but he balked after realizing the length of the agreement would be indefinite.

He said he asked to sign an agreement that would cover only the 2020 election cycle but was told he had to sign the agreement as is or not serve as a volunteer site leader.

An official with the Nevada State Democratic Party said it is standard procedure to ask volunteers to sign a nondisclosure agreement, but signing one is not mandatory to be a site leader. The official said Morrison’s departure as the Legacy site leader would not impact the party’s ability to run a successful caucus.

Although he’s no longer volunteering, Morrison said the Saturday caucuses should go smoothly if the intuitive caucus calculator — a Google Form-assisted tool revealed on Tuesday — works as designed.

Morrison and other volunteers had previously trained to use an app to assist with caucus math and results reporting, but the Nevada Democrats scrapped that plan after a similar app caused widespread problems during the Iowa caucuses earlier this month.

However, during the Tuesday night training, Morrison said he was concerned that volunteers were not told exactly how early voting data was counted and loaded onto the calculator. He added that the woman running his training brought in three iPads, and two did not work.

“I hope and pray that it does work,” Morrison said. “There’s nothing more important to me than defeating (President) Donald Trump.”

Contact Rory Appleton at RAppleton@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0276. Follow @RoryDoesPhonics on Twitter.