LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Despite ongoing national fighting over an executive order about mail ballots and allegations of non-citizens on Nevada's voting rolls, Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar said the Nov. 3 election will go on as expected.
WATCH | Senior political reporter Steve Sebelius sat down with Aguilar to discuss the issue:
Aguilar was reacting to the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling allowing President Donald Trump's administration to proceed with an executive order that seeks to regulate mail-in ballots.
A federal judge sitting in Boston earlier this month struck down the ruling, in part agreeing with a coalition of states including Nevada that contended election laws are the purview of states and Congress, but not the president.
An appeals court upheld that ruling, but a divided Supreme Court allowed the case to proceed on technical grounds.
"Our fight's not over. We're going to continue to fight," Aguilar said. "But at the same time, Nevada voters can be confident that we're going to continue to have elections as we've had elections in the past."
The executive order seeks, among other things, to establish lists of eligible voters, redesign election mail with a unique bar code and prohibit the U.S. Post Office from delivering mail ballots to anyone not on the list.
It was put on hold in part because a final postal service rule implementing the order had yet to go into effect. But now that it has, Aguilar said, more legal action is expected.
Indeed, on Tuesday, national Democrats filed a new motion for a preliminary injunction preventing the executive order's rules from going into effect.
"We will not stand by while Trump and Republicans try to unnecessarily inject chaos and confusion into our elections, just weeks before voting begins," reads a statement from leading Democrats including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.
President Trump claimed in a prime-time speech in July that elections were not secure, and that non-citizens were voting in large numbers. He's also claimed that mail-in voting is especially vulnerable to fraud, and that it should be banned except in cases of disability, travel, illness or service in the military. Trump himself has repeatedly voted by mail in his adopted home state of Florida.
Aguilar said the debate over the use of mail ballots has created uncertainty.
"Well, I think even the conversation is creating the confusion and it's creating the chaos, and that's going to have people self-select out," he said. "People are busy in their lives. They're working hard every single day, and when they start to hear conversations about the elections, they start to say, 'Oh, I don't really understand this. I'm going to choose not to participate.' And that's the real harm. That is an absolute harm when you take a voice away from somebody."
Aguilar said its too late to change procedures for the Nov. 3 election, with ballots set to be mailed to military and overseas voters in mid-September. Early voting begins Oct. 17.
"We've already started designing our mail ballots, we've already started to print the ballots. The fact that this is happening is detrimental to the state and [changing it] would create a significant expense," Aguilar said. "And I don't think it's fair to put that on the backs of Nevada taxpayers."
As the mail ballot debate is playing out, Aguilar is fighting a separate battle over allegations of non-citizens on Nevada's voter rolls. The Homeland Security department initially claimed there were potentially thousands of non-citizen voters on lists here in Nevada, but later said it had identified 185 individuals it suspected of being improperly registered.
Aguilar dismissed that claim with a barnyard epithet in an interview with Democracy Docket, and also in his interview with Channel 13. He said a meeting with Homeland Security officials produced a spreadsheet that lacked enough details to fully investigate the 185 people, and that the government refused a request to provide additional information.
In Nevada, potential voters are asked if they are U.S. citizens on a voter registration form. If they answer yes, the process is supposed to stop there, but some paperwork is still filed, often in error, Aguilar said.
"I think it happens unintentionally, but when it is caught, it's immediately corrected," he said. "Does it happen? Yes, it does. But is it the numbers that they [federal authorities] say? It may be in the single digits, but it's nowhere near the federal government's assumption."
It's illegal for non-citizens to register to vote, and doing so could interfere with attempts to gain legal citizenship. Registering and voting in a federal election is a federal crime that can result in fines and prison time.
