Early times

Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.

Despite the fact that I’m probably on record somewhere in the archives of this newspaper advocating for always voting on Election Day, I went ahead and caucused early last weekend.

I think everyone should caucus properly at least once in their life because it’s such a weird, old-fashioned experience, but I’ve done it and have a surprisingly busy day planned on Saturday. Not sure I could commit an indefinite amount of time to hanging out in the Wooster High School gym, arguing about health care policy with my neighbors.

A nice thing about social media is that it made it really easy to keep an eye on when and where folks were early voting. Margot and I knew to avoid the downtown Reno library, which was the early voting location closest to our house, because we saw online grumbling about the lengthy wait there.

We eventually opted to head to the Washoe County Dems office on Terminal Way—and we waited ’til after dinner on Sunday. The line was totally manageable. The whole process only took about 20 minutes.

I’ve got to say, I loved the tiered voting. Nice to choose a first choice, a second choice, a third choice—and even though it was unnecessary, I chose fourth and fifth place picks too. For a nerd like me, who loves top 10 lists and so forth, it was a great time.

Still, even if you’re not a registered voter or even if you’re registered Republican, you can go caucus properly on this coming Saturday, Feb. 22. To find out when and where to caucus, visit nvdems.com. Voting this early in the national primary process is a pretty amazing opportunity to influence the future of the whole country.

And the funny thing is, since the early caucus voting was so popular, it might not even be too crazy on Saturday. At least I hope not. After the Iowa caucus debacle, there’s a lot of scrutiny on the Nevada Dems to get it right.