LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — A federal judge in Massachusetts on Thursday denied a motion by the government to dismiss a lawsuit seeking to block an executive order that could bring big changes to the way mail ballots are used.
WATCH | Steve Sebelius hears from Nevada's secretary of state on what this could mean for voters:
President Donald Trump's March 31 executive order calls for the creation of lists of eligible voters and prohibits the U.S. Postal Service from delivering mail-in ballots to people not on the list. The postal service has written a proposed rule, but the order has yet to take effect.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani's ruling applies only to the November elections; she held that since the proposed rules have yet to take effect, it's too soon to challenge them for elections that are years away.
But since the November elections are less than five months away — and President Donald Trump's order is written to take effect immediately — Talwani ruled the case can go forward as applied to this year's contests.
"In light of the [executive order's] specific deadlines over the next three months, and the reality that elections will be occurring throughout this period with the November 3, 2026 midterm occurring in just five months, postponing judicial review is impracticable and may inflict significant hardship on Plaintiffs," Talwani wrote in her 17-page ruling.
Those plaintiffs include the state of Nevada, represented by Attorney General Aaron Ford, D-Nev., who has repeatedly sued or joined lawsuits against the Trump administration for what he calls federal overreach.
Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, D-Nev., told Channel 13 in an interview on Thursday that the order exceeds the president's authority, since the Constitution vests election rules in states and in Congress, not the executive.
"This is a time where states have to stand up together and say it is the responsibility of the states," Aguilar said. "We know our voters, we know our county clerks, who actually execute our elections, and we know what's in the best interest of our citizens."
Talwani will consider the state's request to pause the executive order in the future, but Aguilar says if it went into effect, it could have a big effect on Nevada's elections.
"It would be a significant impact to voters," he said. "We saw in '24 and then we just saw against in the '26 primary that Nevadans are choosing to use mail ballots as their preferred choice to vote. We see the highest adoption rates of mail ballots in two of our reddest counties, Nye County and Douglas County. Those are rural communities."
Both Nye and Douglas counties voted for Trump in 2016, 2020 and 2024.
In Nevada, voting by mail has become the most popular method of casting a ballot since the state began sending mail ballots to all voters during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
In the most recent primary, for example, more than 60% of all voters used a mail-in ballot. That includes 64.6% of Democrats and 51% of Republicans.
"It would have a huge impact on Nevadans. Again, doing it in the middle of an election cycle is really not fair to the voters," Aguilar said. "I think it's important for voters to have clarity, and this does not help that clarity. What it does is create confusion and it creates chaos, that's not fair to the county clerks who actually administer our elections at the local level."
The intent of the executive order is to prevent non-citizens from voting in U.S. elections, which is illegal under federal law. Aguilar says voter identity is verified when someone signs up to vote, using a state driver's license or passport. (In Nevada, non-citizens are not eligible to get a driver's license, but can be issued driver authorization cards.)
But the state relies heavily on people being truthful when they fill out voter registration paperwork, which asks prominently about citizenship. Aguilar says there are stiff penalties for registering to vote as a non-citizen.
But he said the federal solution — national databases of eligible voters — is unworkable, and will likely be inaccurate, which could disenfranchise legitimate voters.
"'The system was already supposed to be built and in existence. There's been no start to the program," he said. "And to think that three massive government agencies are going to be a solution to our problem, I think we're going to have a little bit of a hard time buying into the security of that system, even to have those three agencies agree on the mechanics of that system."
