Aguilar rejects federal push for voter data as Trump escalates war on mail ballots

Editor's note: Este artículo está traducido al español.

Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, rebuking the Department of Justice, says he will not share voter data that is protected under state law.

“We are going to stand up to those intimidation tactics,” Aguilar, a Democrat, said during a panel discussion this week. “The Legislature and the governor have given me a mandate to make sure that we make voter data as secure as possible, because without secure data, we cannot have secure elections.”

The DOJ previously sent two requests to Aguilar’s office. The first asked for details on state compliance with the Help America Vote Act, and the second sought a discussion on an information-sharing agreement on likely sensitive voter data.

While Aguilar’s office has sent the information requested in the first letter, he said his team was working on a response to the second inquiry. What information the DOJ is looking for that would be illegal under state law to transfer is unclear.

A member of Aguilar’s office told the Sun that it’s now attempting to schedule a meeting with the department.

The DOJ’s request came after President Donald Trump issued an executive order in March looking to require “documentary proof” of United States citizenship to vote. While the order has since been blocked in court, it would have required a passport or similar document to register to vote.

A little over half of U.S. citizens in Nevada have a valid passport, according to an estimate from the left-leaning Center for American Progress.

There’s scant evidence for Trump’s claims of widespread fraud.

The conservative Heritage Foundation found eight reported cases of fraud over 14 elections in Nevada. That’s less than one report per million ballots cast, according to the Brookings Institution.

“The law is very specific about what we do and how we handle that information,” Aguilar said about the DOJ’s request. “The federal government may think differently, but again, I am subject to state law just as well (as) I’m subject to federal law.”

“We are not going to be intimidated,” he said earlier. “We are going to follow the law. We are going to protect voters’ information.”

Aguilar also countered Trump’s comments this week casting doubts on the accuracy of election machines and labeling mail-in ballots as a scam. The president said he’d be leading a “movement” to end both, discussing an upcoming executive order before the 2026 midterm elections.

Trump incorrectly asserted on Truth Social that states were “merely an ‘agent’” for the federal government, which he maintained was solely responsible for counting votes.

The Constitution enables state legislatures to regulate the “times, places and manner” of congressional elections, though Congress can override them and make its own rules.

“WE WILL BEGIN THIS EFFORT, WHICH WILL BE STRONGLY OPPOSED BY THE DEMOCRATS BECAUSE THEY CHEAT AT LEVELS NEVER SEEN BEFORE,” Trump wrote. States “must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them.”

Aguilar said he has been in contact with Attorney General Aaron Ford, also a Democrat, about how to respond to executive orders in the president’s pipeline.

Nevada is already involved in litigation against the March order.

Aguilar told reporters after a panel hosted by End Citizens United, a campaign finance reform advocacy group, that the state “runs some of the safest, most secure and accessible elections in the country,” noting that mail-in ballots were widely used in 2024. Nearly 670,000 Nevadans cast their ballots through the mail last year, making up almost half of all votes, according to the secretary of state’s office.

Trump’s plan to end mail-in balloting also could backfire politically for the GOP.

Last election, Nye and Douglas counties — which both went for Trump by over 30 points — had the highest adoption percentagewise of mail-in ballots in the state, Aguilar said.

The federal government, he suggested, should instead focus on properly funding elections.

“The federal government has made very minimal investment in our election system,” he said. “For somebody to make a statement about the way we run elections when they have not engaged in the process as they should have, it’s a bit of a farce to me.”

Trump’s most recent push against mail-in ballots came after his Friday meeting in Alaska with Russian President Vladimir Putin. There, Putin called American elections “rigged” due to mail-in ballots, Trump told Fox News.

Russia’s elections, which have kept Putin in power for over two decades, have been repeatedly condemned as rigged by the United States and Europe, with an anti-war candidate being banned from Russia’s ballot last year.

“It doesn’t matter who he’s talking to,” Aguilar said of Trump. “We’re not going to let a foreign dictator tell us how we’re going to run our elections. This is the United States of America. This is the state of Nevada, and the state of Nevada is going to take care of its citizens.”