LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar is asking the federal government to show him the evidence behind a charge that thousands of ineligible non-citizen voters are included on Nevada's voter rolls.
WATCH | Senior Political Reporter Steve Sebelius breaks down how we got to this point:
The request comes after Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin wrote to Aguilar, saying "there may be as many as 15,903 non-citizens" registered to vote in Nevada, and that the government had found 8,576 Nevada voters who matched non-citizens in federal databases.
DHS Letter to Nevada by stevesebelius
In response, Aguliar sent a three-page letter of his own, asking for additional information to establish how the government had arrived at its figures.
Noting that the Homeland Security letter had failed to identify any Nevada voter who was allegedly ineligible, Aguilar asked about the government's sources, especially how officials used Social Security numbers to identify non-citizens, when Nevada has refused to provide Social Security numbers of its voters.
Nevada is one of the states being sued by the federal government for failing to provide an unredacted copy of its full database.
"Any collaborative effort with [the Department of Homeland Security] must therefore be designed to minimize false positives, incorporate meaningful due process for affected registrants and comply fully with Nevada law and the [National Voter Registration Act], which prohibits the systematic cancellation of of voter registrations during the 90 days before each federal election," Aguilar's letter says.
"Our office is open to good faith collaboration that truly enhances the accuracy of our voter rolls and excludes ineligible non-citizens," the letter adds. "Once we have received and reviewed the requested information, my office will reach out to discuss next steps."
Nevada Response to DHS.PDF by stevesebelius
In an interview with Channel 13, Aguilar said the government had an obligation to show its work.
"Look, whenever a third grader does math, you ask them to prove their work," he said. "Here, the federal government owes us an explanation. They owe us an idea of how they came up with that number. You can't just put a number out there with no proof or factual basis."
The exchange of letters comes on the heels of President Trump's speech alleging election security flaws, and his calls on Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, which would require documentary proof of citizenship before a person could register to vote.
In New Jersey, Gov. Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat, has acknowledged that what she called a software glitch allowed more than 6,000 non-citizens to register to vote, and more than 400 to actually cast ballots in an election.
Asked about the New Jersey case, Aguilar said Nevada has safeguards to prevent the same thing from happening here.
"First of all, Nevada does not use the same vendor for that [registration] activity," he said. "We also have processes in place that check the work of the state and the DMV. The local county clerks are ultimately responsible for proving each registered vote, and so there are multiple revisions or reviews of each application that comes to us for a registered user."
Aguilar said he hasn't immediately received a response to his letter.
