Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar anticipates a historically turbulent Election Day, warning that immigration enforcement and federal law enforcement may target polling locations across the state. Aguilar stated that his office is preparing for the possibility that the Trump administration will attempt to seize ballots and openly challenge Nevada’s certified results.
“If this administration chooses to challenge the elections, yes, we are preparing for it,” Aguilar told TIME, noting that officials consider such intervention highly probable. Since the start of the year, Nevada has become the only state in the nation to receive seven voter-related subpoenas from the Department of Justice, and Aguilar confirmed he is personally under investigation by the agency.
Aguilar, a former attorney and entrepreneur elected in 2022, dismissed the subpoenas as intimidation attempts. “I take it as a badge of honor,” he said. “We are following the law every single day… continue to do your intimidation attempts.” To counter potential federal overreach, his office has drafted a template legal filing designed to be submitted within seconds if federal agents attempt to confiscate voting materials at any Nevada polling site.
The tensions follow President Trump’s July claim that approximately 16,000 noncitizens were registered to vote in Nevada. However, that figure has been drastically reduced as state officials have pushed back against the data. Nevada refuses to upload sensitive voter records to the DHS SAVE database due to accuracy and privacy concerns, a stance that DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin has threatened could result in prison time for local officials.
During a recent briefing, DHS officials admitted they had not completed a full manual review of the initial 16,000 names. The department later narrowed the list to 185 individuals but failed to provide specific identities. After receiving an incomplete dataset, Nevada Deputy Attorney General Greg D. Ott stated that every individual on the list was verified as a U.S. citizen.
“A third grader has to show more work in a math problem than DHS is having to show in challenging the citizenship of American citizens,” Aguilar said. A DHS spokesperson disputed the characterization, asserting the department is assisting Nevada by narrowing its voter rolls.
With early voting beginning October 17, Aguilar is urging Nevadans to remain calm and stick to their voting plans. The state relies heavily on mail-in ballots, with 86% of voters utilizing them in the last cycle. He emphasized the importance of speed in counting and reporting results to minimize the window for federal actors to generate narratives of fraud.
“The shorter the time we get results out, the less time the feds have an opportunity to create a narrative that could create chaos within the elections process,” Aguilar explained. Despite recent judicial rejections of similar DOJ lawsuits in other states, Aguilar insisted that Nevada must maintain a strategic posture to protect public confidence in the electoral system.
Threatening state officials with prison for refusing to share data? This is getting pretty out of hand very quickly.
The urgency around rapid counting makes total sense. If they rush the results, there is less time for chaos narratives to spread.
It’s chilling that the Secretary of State is personally under investigation by the DOJ. This feels like pure political intimidation.
Seventeen thousand noncitizens? That number dropped to 185 and then vanished? What is actually going on here?
Drafting a template to submit in seconds? That is incredibly smart preparation. They need to be ready for anything this cycle.