When you think early primary voting, you think of New Hampshire and of earnest living-room discussions as Iowans gather for their caucuses—an hours-long process that, unlike voting in a primary, involves sitting and arguing with your neighbors in a democratic act that’s as close to Norman Rockwell (and the Athenian demos) as you’re likely to find in the Western world. If you think of who lives in these early states, you think of ethanol-obsessed corn farmers, a handful of workers in ailing factories, maybe a few commuters from southern New Hampshire driving to their offices at Fidelity.

But this winter, Nevada is getting in on the action. Croupiers and cocktail waitresses, chefs and chambermaids, ranchers and miners will take shift breaks to vote in the new early Nevada caucuses, a potential fulcrum in determining who our next president will be.

As a political reporter, I can think of nothing more fun than ditching Manchester for the Mirage, but as an American, I have my doubts about whether this change is good for us as a country.

First, some background. For decades, Iowa and New Hampshire have dominated presidential nominations because of their sainted first-in-the-nation status. Iowa has always been the first caucus and New Hampshire the first primary. But this year, Nevada, a state built on the dreams of silver prospectors and Bugsy Siegel, has been given an early caucus, likely to take place between the votes in Iowa and New Hampshire—although many of the early states are threatening to change their primary dates, and the schedules remain in flux. At first, it was just a Democratic caucus, but then, earlier this year, Nevada’s Republicans got jealous and moved their caucuses to the same day. Now Mitt Romney is eyeing the voting power of the state’s large Mormon population.

Appropriately enough for Las Vegas’ home, Nevada got the caucuses through luck. For years, minorities in the Democratic Party have argued that Iowa and New Hampshire are too white to have such a crucial role. Because no potential presidential candidate wanted to raise the ire of New Hampshire or Iowa, minorities’ arguments generally went unheeded. But after the previous Democratic Senate leader, Tom Daschle of South Dakota, was defeated in 2004, the rise of Harry Reid, the senior senator from Nevada, to the position gave the state an inside straight. Reid argued that his state was perfect for joining the Iowa-New Hampshire duopoly. It’s small enough that minor candidates can compete, it’s a swing state, and it’s a signal of the Democrats’ commitment to winning the West.

Now the candidates have to pay attention to things that never come up in Des Moines—mining and gaming, concerns about water rights, and, most prominently, the debate over the transfer of nuclear waste from the nation’s power plants to Yucca Mountain. Are we ever going to see a revival of nuclear power in America? The biggest thing stopping it could be the Nevada caucuses, which have basically put the presidential candidates on record against the transfer. If there is no place to put spent fuel rods, you can’t very well increase the number of nuclear power plants. Nevadans are overwhelmingly opposed to their state’s being the nation’s nuclear waste dump, and the presidential candidates (except for John McCain) have quickly fallen in line. As the caucuses approach, John Edwards, who once favored dumping in Yucca, now declares it dangerous.

In ways both good and bad, the Nevada caucuses will give unions an even bigger role than they’ve had before. No group in Nevada’s Democratic caucuses is more pivotal than Local 226 of the Culinary Workers Union, which meets in a grim, one-story white building near an outfit called Carpets Galore at the northern end of the Las Vegas Strip. The union represents about half of Vegas’ hotel and casino employees, not just those toiling in kitchens—as its name would suggest—but also the 60,000 workers who make the beds and scrub the toilets.

The union’s head is D. Taylor. His actual name is Donald, but his father had that name already, so D. stuck. Taylor put himself through Georgetown University working in the kitchens of preppy bars. His calm voice and mellow mien belie the fact that the 50-year-old is, when I meet him in July, in the midst of heated negotiations with MGM Mirage, the owners of the Bellagio and other Vegas landmarks. It’s not going well. “We’ve met with them 32 times, and we’re going to keep meeting with them,” Taylor tells me in his office, which is adorned with a portrait of César Chavez.

I like that D. Taylor has a role in picking the next president. Local 226 is an exemplary union because it shows that organized labor and growth can be compatible. “You can’t pretend the smokestack industries are coming back, but you can organize the ones that are growing and help them grow,” Taylor says. A Vegas C.W.U. cook makes about 50 percent more than a nonunion one.

In late August, Taylor and his members got most of what they wanted—higher wages and, more important, the chance to organize nonunion workers in the combination condominium-hotels now under construction. Not surprisingly, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton quickly issued statements praising the deal. This all seems good. While most of the big casino operators are being relatively quiet in this election, Local 226 is fighting the good fight.

But here’s my problem: The downside of the Nevada caucuses is that we’re potentially handing our nation’s fate to a state that doesn’t exactly have Iowa’s or New Hampshire’s civic culture—something that’s reflected in those states’ traditionally high voter turnout and the old saw about the Iowan who couldn’t decide whether to vote for a candidate because he’d met him only twice. For the citizens of New Hampshire, civic engagement is in the blood. With 400 members, its state assembly is the largest of any in the country and the third-largest in the English-speaking world.

It’s not that Iowa and New Hampshire are without faults. Thanks to Iowa, we’re on a national binge to make corn-based ethanol, even though it’s not as wise as producing cellulose-based ethanol. (See “Big Green Machines.”) Nevada, though, is lacking in civic culture. Its voter turnout is among the lowest in the country; Iowa’s and New Hampshire’s are among the highest.

Even proud Nevadans can’t be sure what’s next. “We don’t know what Nevada is going to be like, because we’ve never had anything like this,” says politico Billy Vassiliadis, of R&R Partners, the Vegas ad firm that came up with the “What happens here, stays here” slogan. Still, he’s optimistic that the state will pull off a great caucus.

But as one Nevada operative puts it, “This is a place where the prevailing architectural style is literally to build concrete walls between your house and your neighbor’s. How do you overcome that?” You don’t, I think.

And a caucus demands a particularly high level of civic responsibility. When I visited the Nevada State Democratic Party headquarters on a 110-degree day in July, a roomful of volunteers was working the phones to find the 500 to 700 caucus sites that will be needed around the state. (The Republican Party, late to get on the caucus bandwagon, is just beginning to organize.) The major casinos are likely to agree to set up huge at-large stations in their hotels to allow shift workers to caucus without having to go back to their hometowns, marking the first time ever that the American arts of representative democracy and keno will be practiced under one roof.

Since the rules of a caucus can be confusing, the state is at pains to explain how it differs from a primary, even importing experts from Iowa to help run the operation. Instead of voters’ just showing up and casting ballots, Nevadans will gather in groups that support their candidates. There’s haggling, and eventually the delegates are proportioned accordingly. To educate voters, the Democratic Party has sponsored “mockuses,” where Nevadans choose pizza toppings instead of candidates.

I find all of this touching but troubling. There’s something warming about a state built more than any other on rugged individualism trying to build a civic culture like that of Iowa or New Hampshire. The question is whether the rest of us should gamble on Nevada’s developing one in time.