Nevada group files initiatives for independent redistricting, open primaries

Jessica Hill, Las Vegas Review-Journal on Sep 9, 2025

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The group behind attempts to bring an independent redistricting commission to Nevada is giving it another go in 2026 and launching a renewed effort to open up primaries.

Vote Nevada PAC filed two constitutional amendment ballot initiatives Tuesday. One would create an independent commission responsible for the once-in-a-decade process of redrawing the state’s political maps, and the second aims to allow nonpartisan voters to participate in state primaries — an effort that failed in 2024 when voters rejected a ballot question that would have also implemented ranked choice voting.

Efforts to bring an independent redistricting commission to Nevada are nothing new. The political action committee filed similar initiatives in 2020, 2022 and 2024, but each time they failed to make it to the ballot.

Sondra Cosgrove, Vote Nevada’s executive director, previously told the Review-Journal that she thinks this time around will be different, in part because of the national discourse surrounding gerrymandering.

The redistricting commission ballot initiative proposes a balanced commission made up equally of Democrats, Republicans and non-major-party Nevadans, and it will replace the state’s legislative redistricting process by transferring funding for redistricting from the Legislature to the independent commission, according to a Tuesday statement from Vote Nevada.

It would limit redistricting to the 180 days following the release of the U.S. Census, prohibiting mid-cycle redistricting.

The ballot initiative to open primaries to nonpartisan voters would be similar to Speaker Steve Yeager’s bill in the previous session that ultimately failed. It proposes to “add the right to equal participation in all taxpayer-funded elections regardless of political affiliation,” according to the group.

“Political parties can engage in privately funded nominating processes if they so desire,” the group said in the statement. It mentioned the Nevada Republican Party’s private caucus and the national Democratic Party hosting a Zoom meeting to select Kamala Harris as its nominee in 2024.

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