Turnout on the first day of early voting was “crazy,” George Guthrie, spokesperson for the Washoe County Registrar of Voters, said Saturday.
“It’s definitely a lot busier than it has been in the primary and the presidential preference primary,” with people voting in person or dropping off mail-in ballots, Guthrie said. “We’re actually seeing lines at some vote centers.”
One of those lines was at South Valleys Library, where over 100 people were queued up at 10:30 a.m. Several of them said election security concerns brought them out to vote in person or drop their mail-in ballot off.
More: Nevada early voting: Where to vote or drop off your ballot for 2024 election
Christie and David Phillips were among the first in line to use the voting machines. The Washoe residents said they don’t trust the system and voting in person is the only way to make sure their vote is counted.
“Nevada’s got the mail-in balloting and we don’t trust that,” David Phillips said. “They need to take that away. Return it back to the way it used to be.”
The line was moving slowly, but the Phillipses said they were “guinea pigs” because the election workers were still getting used to the new digital voting system.
“But they were really great in there,” Christie Phillips said.
Guthrie said the new Voter Registration and Election Management System, or VREMS, will take some getting used to for both election workers and voters, so he encouraged voters to check the voting center wait times online.
The VREMS system centralizes voter data across the state, rather than by county, which elections administrators say reduces the potential for errors. It went live earlier this year, and this is the first election the system is being used.
Carol and Ron Moschetti said they were willing to wait because they know the process is slower with the new security measures.
“I really believe that they’re just trying to figure it out. I think this was their trial run and they’ll figure it out. No complaints,” Ron Moschetti said.
Jennifer and James Massey came down to early vote just to get it over with. They are wary of mail-in ballots and have some business trips coming up, so they wanted to make sure they got their votes in in time. They placed their ballots in the dropbox.
“I felt very comfortable with the process,” Jennifer Massey said.
As for the election itself, James Massey called it a “circus.”
Jennifer Massey agreed, saying she was tired of hearing candidates dish out negative comments. She wished they would focus on specific policies and what they want to do to help the American people.
“Both candidates are idiots. This is the worst year of elections I can remember,” James Massey said.
Mike and Lindy Leonard, Nancy and Gary Rinehert and Susan and Craig Bambrough were among those who didn’t have to wait in line — they stopped by to drop off their mail-in ballots before they headed off to breakfast.
All three couples said it was an easy process. They filled out their ballots beforehand and went straight to the much shorter drop-off line to confirm their signatures.
“We could see how well it was running. They’re doing a good job,” Lindy Leonard said of election workers.
Mike Leonard said their top concern is keeping elections fair. His wife agreed, saying she believed the last presidential election was not fair.
“I think a lot of people feel the same,” Lindy Leonard said, pointing to the large turnout as a sign that many others agree with her.
Nancy Rinehert said she was baffled by the results of the last presidential election because she remembers thousands of people showing up in the freezing cold to vote on Election Day, many of them Republicans. Joe Biden won Washoe County in 2020 by 5 percentage points.
The six Washoe residents said everyone needs to get out and vote.
“You’re voting by not voting,” Mike Leonard said.
“Nobody is going to have everything that you want, so pick your poison,” Lindy Leonard said. “Someone is going to get elected.”
Early voting runs through Nov. 1. Election Day is Nov. 5.
Jaedyn Young covers local government for the Reno Gazette-Journal. Her wages are 100% funded by donations and grants; if you’d like to see more stories like this one, please consider donating at RGJ.com/donate. Send your story ideas and feedback to Jaedyn at jyoung@rgj.com.
Truckee Meadows Fire & Rescue and a number of agencies are fighting a brush fire that is prompting evacuations in Palomino Valley north of Spanish Springs.
Aerial firefighting underway on the fire, which has been dubbed the Ironwood Fire.
People are asked to avoid the area of Pyramid Highway, Iron Springs Road, and Whiskey Springs Road as first responders make their way to the scene.
Evacuation orders are in place for the area below. The evacuation point is the Ironwood Events Center.
LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Nevada residents won’t be receiving devices that allow semi-automatic rifles to fire at the rate of a fully automatic machine gun, thanks to a settlement worked out by the state’s lawyers.
But hundreds of other people across the country are eligible to receive so-called force reset triggers, under a lawsuit negotiated by the U.S. government and firearms manufacturers.
The move comes after an executive order from President Donald Trump prompted a review of the government’s regulation of firearms in general, and a reversal of the government’s position in two key cases.
Meanwhile, a lawsuit filed by 16 states, including Nevada, seeks to ban forced reset triggers using the reasoning the federal government formerly employed in its own legal actions.
“Especially coming from a state like Nevada, where we’ve experienced a mass shooting, we don’t want these forms of devices, predominantly because it’s against our law”, said Attorney General Aaron Ford. “But secondly, we have personal experience on these, what happens when these types of things are placed into the wrong hands.”
A semi-automatic rifle, such as the Armalite Rifle 15, or AR-15, fires a single round every time the trigger is pressed. The trigger must be released for a new round to be inserted into the chamber.
But a forced reset trigger — sometimes called FRT — allows a weapon to fire rounds as long as the trigger is held down, similar to the operation of a military-style M4 or M16 rifle. In fully automatic mode, the weapon will continue firing until its magazine is empty.
The forced reset trigger is installed internally, and it may not be readily apparent to an observer that the weapon has been modified.
Fully automatic weapons are generally prohibited to civilians, as are devices that allow semi-automatic weapons to fire at fully automatic rates, under the National Firearms Act of 1934, the Gun Control Act of 1968 and the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986.
After the deadly 1 October shooting in 2017, the Nevada Legislature banned so-called bump stocks, which are devices affixed externally to a rifle’s stock that use the recoil of the rifle to achieve continuous fire.
The perpetrator of 1 October used rifles equipped with bump stocks to rain gunfire on a crowd at the Route 91 Harvest music festival on the Las Vegas Strip.
Under Nevada law, passed in 2019, it’s illegal to import, sell or possess any device that “…materially increases the rate of fire of the semi-automatic firearm or approximates the action or rate of fire of a machine gun.”
That language applies equally to bump stocks as well as forced reset triggers.
And the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco formerly took the view that forced reset triggers were devices that turned semi-automatic rifles into illegal machine guns. Starting in 1975, the ATF classified devices similar to forced reset triggers as machine gun devices.
As of last summer, the ATF had taken possession of at least 11,884 forced reset trigger devices under its regulations and brought legal actions against their manufacturers.
In August 2023, however, gun rights groups and trigger makers sued the ATF, challenging the rules classifying the triggers as machine gun devices. A Texas federal judge agreed with the plaintiffs and ordered the AFT to stop enforcing its regulations and to return forced reset triggers to their previous owners, even in states where the law prohibited them, such as Nevada.
The government eventually said it would return the devices, but only in places where they were legal, an approach the gun makers objected to, saying the federal government could not be trusted with interpreting state laws.
On February 7, however, President Trump issued an executive order to protect Second Amendment rights, prompting a Justice Department review of all gun regulations. The AFT subsequently withdrew its lawsuits against the trigger makers and agreed to return all triggers previously seized from owners.
But lawyers representing Nevada and other states secured an agreement: no triggers would be returned to states where the law bans them. Ford said the deal would protect the state, at least temporarily, but that loopholes persist.
“We have said that they will not be shipped to Nevada,” said Ford. “But our borders are porous, intrastate borders are porous, to be sure. So a gun that’s delivered to Utah, or an FRT that’s delivered to Utah may very well find its way across the border into Mesquite or something. At the end of the day, these are very real issues that we have to address.”
Ford said he would make enforcement of gun laws — including possession or use of forced reset triggers — a priority for his office.
“It’s one of the highest levels of priority, because I’ve always supported common-sense gun safety measures that are going to keep the public safe, and that’s what this is about.”
That’s why Nevada is continuing as a plaintiff in the case State of New Jersey v. Bondi, which asks a court to find that the ATF’s old viewpoint — that forced reset triggers create machine guns out of regular semi-automatic rifles — is the law, and thus ban them nationwide.
Published
Travis and Jason Kelce were spotted living it up in Lake Tahoe over the weekend — capping off their evening with a high-stakes gambling session at a Casino.
The NFL brothers were photographed leaving Harrah’s Casino on the Nevada side of the city just before 2 AM Sunday looking relaxed and in good spirits after what appeared to be a high rollers’ run at the tables.
The Kelces kept it casual with Travis wearing a t-shirt and Jason rocking a pair of shorts despite the late hour. Travis pulled out his phone and appeared to be checking messages … maybe sending a late night text to Taylor Swift?
Travis, whose every move has been tracked this offseason amid his romance with Swift, looked especially carefree as he exited with his older brother.
TMZSports.com
The duo had enjoyed their late-night fun following an appearance at the American Century Championship, the annual celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe.
Both Kelce brothers teed off in the tournament earlier in the day, drawing crowds and cameras … and, while it didn’t go great golf-wise, the two had fun pounding beers and interacting with fans.
But once the sun set, the action clearly shifted from the green grass to the green felt of a card table, it seems.
No word yet on whether the brothers cashed out big, but one thing’s for sure … when the Kelces roll into town, the chips — and the good times — are bound to stack up.
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