Nor'Town: Politics in North Las Vegas, Nevada

Legislature to Discuss Change to NLV Campaign Law

The Government Affairs committee will discuss changes to North Las Vegas campaign laws on Thursday, Feb. 19th starting at 8am. You can keep track of the legislation AB 39 here. You can listen to testimony on the bill here.

The bill will require that all candidates must run in the primary. The problem with it is that if a candidate wins a majority of total votes cast, they win. I think all candidates should be required to run in the general and should be allowed to skip the primary if two or fewer candidates show up. If there's a primary, the two to vote getters should move to the general. To allow the primary to decide the election in apathetic Nor'Town simply hands the election over to a few hundred cronies. Force everybody to the general, so at least a modest crowd gets a chance to vote.

Yummy Nor'Town Sludge Cakes

• Jon Ralston pretends he's interested in Nor'Town politics and predicts Shari "Binion's Bucks" Buck will be the next mayor. (Sun) Oh, you can't tell the councilpeople apart? Buck's the one who is using city workers for her election effort. That we know of.
• One of Nor'Town's guys on the Clark County Commission is having a Nixonian moment. Tom Collins refuses to speak with the folks at a newspaper that gave him a little bad press. Collins is apparently going to make all of Moapa Valley pay by usurping local control over the Moapa Town board. (MVN)
• City staff say that changing Nor'Town election laws so that voters won't be bothered with actually having to vote for councilpeople in the general election is in keeping with what Henderson and Sou'Town do. (Sun) I suppose they'd jump off a building if everyone else was doing it, too?
• You can keep track of the bill over at the Legislature site.
• Ah. Sexism and cheap hooch. Now that's Nor'Town! (VN)
• New Year celebratory gunfire (LVNow), street robberies (Fox5), etc.,etc.

Nor'Town Campaign Laws May Change in Legislature

Yeh, yeh. There's too much fun going on over in the Clark County Commission where they learned, much to their surprise, that there are still Nor'Townies living in the Buena Vista Apartments that the Nor'Town City Council convinced them to bulldoze. (Sun,Sun)

Ha, ha, Rory! Never trust a Nor'Towner!

Anyways, you all might want to have a gander at the proposal to change election laws in North Las Vegas which will be making it's way through the state legislature next spring. (AB39) Basically it will require a mandatory primary election for every candidate. In the past, candidates with only one or less opponents skipped the primary and went straight to the general. AB39 will allow the winner of a "total majority of the votes cast" during the primary be declared winner of the office.

That seems a bit hinky to me, especially when a very bare minority of the voters ever make it to the primary. It seems a way to make the anointing of the lobbyists' favored few even easier than the present system makes it.

Seems to me that if you have more than 2 candidates in the primary, no matter how well the winner does, she or he should still have to face the second ranked winner in the general, when the greatest number of sleepy Nor'Townies are paying attention.

Plus, the new version is a confusing mess. Tell your Assemblyfolk and Senators to kill that sick puppy, or at least have somebody who can write an complete English sentence take a shot at it first, so everybody can have a chance at figuring out what the heck it really says. Before putting it out of its misery, of course.

And somebody please tell me why the bill has "on behalf of the City of Las Vegas" at the top. Is Sou'Town allowed to make laws for us? Is Oscar Goodman secretely trying to make us look like idiots?

Or is it simply too much to ask bill drafters to actually proofread their stuff before submitting it?