Nevada’s GOP primary for the 2024 presidential election is coming up in February. But the Nevada GOP caucus is also happening during the same week. How did that happen? Well… it’s complicated. Nevada GOP Chairman Michael McDonald had already set up a caucus to be held in February, but last week another Republican candidate announced they were running and registered for the primary. That triggered a state law making the primary election mandatory. But the state party isn’t backing down on it’s caucus plans, so apparently both events will take place. And it gets even more complicated from that point when you dig into the details. (Associated Press)

The Nevada secretary of state’s office will hold a presidential primary for Republican voters, despite the Nevada GOP saying they’ll only honor the results of their party-run caucus to choose the Republican presidential nominee.

A second longshot Republican presidential candidate cast their name on the presidential primary ballot Friday, triggering a 2021 state law that requires the Nevada secretary of state’s office to hold a presidential primary for the party.

Two presidential nominating contests are now scheduled over the span of three days in February, which could result in widespread confusion for Republican voters.

When the state GOP passed its election rules this summer, they included a provision stating that any candidate who appears on a primary ballot will not be allowed to participate in the caucus. So everyone has a decision to make. Compounding matters further, the party chairman has already said that his party will only honor the results of the caucus. So if any of the candidates choose to appear in the primary, they will not be winning Nevada as things stand today.

That may sound like it must be some sort of violation of election laws, but it’s not. The rules for primaries and caucuses are set by the parties and they can pretty much operate them however they like. Some have suggested that Chairman McDonald is trying to stack the deck in Donald Trump’s favor, though he insists that isn’t the case. I haven’t seen any fresh polling out of Nevada since the end of June, but Trump was up by 30 then, so none of this may wind up mattering.

The Nevada Secretary of State says that his hands are tied. State law doesn’t give him an option in this matter. He has to organize a primary. Of course, that leads to the question of what happens if you hold a primary and nobody shows up. It just seems like a waste of time and money, but strange things happen in politics as we should all know by now.

The only two nationally known candidates to commit to the caucus so far are Donald Trump and Vivek Ramaswamy. The only two who are registered for the primary are people you’ve probably never heard of if you don’t live in Nevada, and one of them isn’t even a resident of the state. He’s from Texas. I’m guessing most of the rest of the field will be signing up for the caucus before long. That might not apply to Ron DeSantis, however. The Super PAC funding his primary campaign pulled all of its people out of Nevada already and there are rumors that they did so because of objections to how the caucus was being set up.

This might potentially lead to some voter confusion. If the party doesn’t do a good enough job getting all of the information out, Republican voters may wind up voting in the primary because they’re unaware that the caucus is taking place or vice versa. I don’t believe you can get in trouble for voting in both, but people may lose confidence in the outcome if the two contests produce two different winners, which seems the most likely outcome at this point.