But on this penultimate Monday before Election Day, lines cleared rather quickly at a voting trailer outside a Las Vegas Athletic Club and inside the Meadows Mall.
One voter, Steve Smith, flashed me a big smile when he mentioned becoming a resident of the state in January, and voting for the first time as a Nevadan.
The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News/Marist poll of Oct. 25 has Barack Obama ahead of Mitt Romney by three percentage points in Nevada. Nationwide, Latino voters are motivated to cast ballots, though in Las Vegas some are tired of the barrage of political ads on TV in Spanish and English.
Last week on KNPR Nevada Public Radio's State of Nevada, guest Eliseo Medina, international secretary of the Service Employees International Union, spoke about his work rallying Latinos to vote. He discussed the weight of the Latino electorate and what it's most concerned about.
"We have to participate," Medina said. "Not just simply give our votes away. We need to hold [politicians] accountable after the election."
Medina said candidates should worry about the Latino vote in future elections, too, describing Latinos as a "sleeping giant. We're awake and we're getting cranky."
"We've had enough of candidates who say a few words in Spanish or go out and eat tamales and expect that that's going to do it," Medina said. "We expect results. This campaign is not going to stop Nov. 6."
