Nevada’s largest voting bloc isn’t a party. As of this month, 815,596 Nevadans — 38.61% of all registered voters — are registered nonpartisan, outnumbering both Democrats and Republicans. Add in the Independent American Party and Libertarian rolls, and independents aren’t a niche in this state. We’re the plurality. That math only moves in one direction: nonpartisan registration has outpaced both major parties in registration growth month after month this year. From here forward, no candidate in Nevada wins a competitive race without independent voters. That’s not a talking point — it’s arithmetic. The Secretary of State’s office exists to serve all of them equally, not to referee a fight between two parties that no longer represent most Nevadans.

Three Very Different Views on Your Voter Data

This November, Nevadans choose between three very different approaches to running our elections and protecting the voter rolls. (The Nevada Independent has a detailed breakdown of where the candidates stand.)

Cisco Aguilar defends the current system as-is and has spent this campaign in a public standoff with the Trump administration over a federal executive order that sought to overhaul how states run elections. Standing up for Nevada’s authority over its own elections is the right instinct — but it shouldn’t take a fight with Washington to remind an incumbent that Nevada runs Nevada’s elections. That should be the starting position, not a talking point deployed under pressure.

Jim Marchant wants to go the opposite direction: eliminate mail ballots, unregister and reregister every voter in the state from scratch, and rip out the electronic machines counties depend on. That’s not election security. That’s throwing out a system that works for the vast majority of lawful voters because you don’t trust the outcome of your own past races.

My approach is simpler and more accountable than either: Nevada’s voter data stays under Nevada’s control, full stop. When we cross-check the rolls for accuracy, that work happens inside the Secretary of State’s office, using federal data — like SSA and citizenship verification sources — to flag discrepancies. A flagged record gets investigated and confirmed by Nevada election officials before anything changes. Nobody gets bulk-purged. Nobody’s registration is signed away to a federal data-sharing scheme, and nobody has to reregister from scratch because a candidate lost an election he didn’t like the result of. That’s the flag-and-investigate standard: accurate rolls, lawful voters protected, and the state — not Washington, not a partisan crusade — in charge of the process.

Results, not noise. That’s the difference this race comes down to.

A Northern Nevada Race Worth Watching

You don’t have to look past Congressional District 2 to see why independent representation matters. Nevada News and Views has been covering the fallout up north after the Republican nominee for that seat won his primary by renting a house in Reno just months before filing — after running for a different seat in Clark County. Northern Nevada voters already feel like their district gets treated as an afterthought. Now they’re being asked to send someone to Washington who only recently discovered where it was.

That’s part of why Lynn Chapman, the Independent American Party’s nominee for CD2, deserves a serious look from every voter in that district — Republican, nonpartisan, or otherwise. Chapman has lived and worked in Nevada since 1984 and has spent four decades in the trenches of state policy fights, with a real record of conservative wins to show for it:

• Beat back a property tax hike. During the 2021 legislative session, Chapman helped organize opposition to a bill that would have raised the property tax abatement caps on single-family homes and commercial property. The bill died after overwhelming public opposition — one of the clearest grassroots wins of that session.
• Protected the citizenship test requirement for graduation. That same session, a bill sought to roll back a rule requiring Nevada high schoolers to pass a portion of the U.S. citizenship test before graduating. Chapman’s advocacy helped keep the requirement in state law.
• Stood against federal constitutional convention applications. Chapman has testified at the Legislature against resolutions calling for an Article V constitutional convention, arguing an open convention risks rewriting protections Nevadans already rely on.
• Helped build ballot access for constitutional conservatives. In the early 1990s, Chapman was part of the effort that got the Independent American Party onto the Nevada ballot in the first place — and she’s run the party’s books as State Treasurer ever since.
• Carried petition drives most people wouldn’t touch. Alongside longtime Nevada conservative leader Janine Hansen, Chapman spent years gathering signatures on statewide petitions defining marriage as between a man and a woman, cutting taxes, and barring government employees from holding seats in two branches of government at once.

That’s four decades of showing up, session after session, on the issues conservatives actually care about — not a campaign ad written six months before an election. Nevadans for Barnhill is proud to stand with candidates like Chapman who put the state’s residents ahead of party ambition. If you’re tired of transplants treating Nevada offices as stepping stones, an independent voice that’s actually earned it is on your ballot this November.

The Common Thread

Whether it’s who controls your voter data or who represents a district they just moved into, the pattern is the same: Nevadans are increasingly done choosing between two parties that don’t reflect where most of us actually stand. We’re the plurality now. It’s time our representation caught up.