In-person early voting begins in Nevada. Here's what you should know.

Saturday marks the start of in-person early voting — a method that, along with universal mail-in voting, significantly expands Nevadans' ability to vote and is being re-embraced even at the conservative end of the political spectrum.

For details on all voting and registration options, see The Nevada IndependentVisit the General Election FAQ page and use these detailed resources to help you make your decisions:

In-person early voting will take place Saturday, October 19th through Friday, November 1st. Officials of all stripes are marking the occasion this weekend – Republicans including Senate candidate Sam Brown, House candidate Drew Johnson and House candidates are headlining an exit event. the-vote early voting rally on Saturday.

Democrats, who have supported early voting for several cycles, are hosting former President Barack Obama – one of the party's most popular figures – for a rally of their own on Saturday. The Harris campaign is bringing in surrogates from Nevada and California to get the message out in Las Vegas and Reno.

Early voting is becoming increasingly popular

In 2020, then-President Donald Trump railed against mail-in voting and early voting for months, falsely denigrating these long-popular methods in the West as crooked.

Republicans, trying to learn from their mistakes in 2020 and 2022, believe not adopting these voting methods was a mistake — and sowing distrust among their voters. In the 2022 midterms, about 51 percent of votes in Nevada were cast by mail and about 28 percent were cast early in person.

In the 2020 presidential election, as the pandemic raged, the results were even more stark: Only 11 percent of Nevada voters voted in person on Election Day.

In 2020 and 2022, more Republicans than Democrats used in-person early voting — but in the midterm elections, it was the least used method for both parties. This cycle, Republican campaigns are all-in on promoting early voting, even as Donald Trump has delivered mixed messages, calling it “stupid stuff” and insisting he would prefer paper ballots while also headlining rallies for early voting.

While the state's Republican Party is on board, they have also undermined their own message – for example, by hosting a presidential convention that only allowed in-person voting for days, rather than the state-sponsored primary, which included absentee voting and early voting.

A Trump campaign official in Nevada said the campaign is not worried about Trump undermining its message of trust and that Republican voters have confidence in early voting because the state party and the Republican National Committee have actively pursued preemptive lawsuits against the secretary of state – the The state and numerous judges have dismissed it as unfounded.

Republican figures in the state, including Gov. Joe Lombardo, have been busy since last year restoring the right's faith in voting methods outside of Election Day, acknowledging that parties can appeal to voters more efficiently if they can get members of their party to vote early . If more of a party's voters have cast their ballots early, party officials can spend the days and weeks before the election contacting the narrower group of those who have not yet cast a vote.

“There has definitely been a shift to encourage voters to engage with the system knowing that this is the new path forward,” the Trump campaign official said.

The introduction of in-person voting and the pressure of national attention on swing state Nevada can be enormous, but Clark County Registrar Lorena Portillo says her staff has learned from their experiences in 2020 and prepared for a variety of scenarios .

“I'm not distracted by the fact that something can happen, am I?” Portillo said The Indy in an interview earlier this week. “No, we have the right plans and the right protocols in place and the people who were briefed and involved in the plan are as confident as I am.”