Q&A: “What they say about non-citizens voting is a bunch of bullshit.” Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar on Protecting the Right to Vote and Fair Elections

Voters in 26 states will elect secretaries of state this year.

This year, there’s major attention on Congressional races, and for good reason. But in pivotal swing states across the country, other extremely important races are playing out. Voters in 26 states will hold secretary of state elections in November. While these races don’t get the media hype they deserve, they will be enormously consequential for the future of free and fair elections.

I spoke with one candidate running this year, current Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar.

Aguilar knows something about standing up to threats to our election system. He is the namesake of Department of Justice v. Aguilar, the case wherein the Trump Administration sued the Nevada secretary of state office for defying federal orders to turn over voters’ personal information. I spoke with Aguilar about why electing secretaries of state with a strategy and a backbone really matters.

Democracy News: There are numerous threats to our elections right now, more than I can even summarize in a question. How should we be prioritizing those threats?

Cisco Aguilar: The biggest threat to our election is Donald Trump, and the fact that he’s trying to create chaos. He has this delusional obsession with the 2020 election, which I think the American public has moved past, right? In the 2022 election, every secretary of state who ran against an election denier won. That’s the public saying, “Hey, move on. We have better, bigger issues to worry about as Americans. We need to be focused on solutions. We want leadership.”

This is a federalism issue. The Constitution says that states run elections. It’s up to the states to really provide the plan, to provide the strategy, and to provide the confidence that our elections are safe, secure, and accessible. Nevada has some of the most safe, secure and accessible elections in the country because we have a strategy.

All the secretary of state elections around the country this year are really about the 2028 election. If we don’t elect strong secretaries now, 2028 is going to be chaos. That’s going to be a unique election year because neither party will have an incumbent running for president. Instead of candidates talking about their vision, their plan, and the issues that Americans want to hear, they’re going to continue to talk about the election system. There is going to be substantial litigation. That’s why we need to elect strong secretaries of state now.

Democracy News: What are some of your priorities as secretary of state?

Aguilar: Nevada is one of the most diverse states in the country, from a geographical perspective, but also a demographics perspective. We have a 30% Latino voter base. We’re a 24/7 economy. If somebody in Las Vegas took the time on Election Day to go vote, that’s money that they don’t have in their pocket because they work in the service industry. So, those are the challenges we look at when thinking about how to make elections accessible. We’re making sure that we are meeting the needs of the working people.

For me, it’s a bit more personal. I’m the first elected Latino secretary of the state. I have a duty and a commitment to my community to protect them.

One of my priorities is making sure that the voter experience is strong. We want people to feel confident going to the polling locations. We want them to feel confident that their mail-in ballot is going to get counted. We want them to know that Nevada is one of the most critical states in the country when it comes to our elections, and I have to build that faith, trust, confidence. And so, when I see the president make these attacks on certain communities, especially in Nevada, again, where a large percentage of the voter base is Latino, I know it’s intentional, just as it’s intentional in Georgia, where there’s a strong Black voter base.

We also have to make sure our poll workers feel safe. After Trump’s intimidation, people really understand what it means for a poll worker to be there.

Trump wants to create fear. What they say about non-citizens voting is a bunch of bullshit. It’s not happening. It’s intimidation. But you know, the more they try to intimidate us, the more emboldened election officials become to protect our voters and protect our states. Nevada led the legal challenge to Trump’s executive order exerting federal control over elections.

Democracy News: Trump’s Department of Justice sued your office because you refused to give the federal government Nevadans’ voter data. The case is ongoing. Why aren’t you giving the federal government the information?

Aguilar: More than anything, it’s a data privacy issue. Nevadans are very sensitive about data privacy, because we recently suffered a significant cyber-attack at the state government. I think Nevada citizens saw the impact of cyber-attacks and became more aware of the information the government has.

When we got the letter from the DOJ asking for voters’ information, our response wasn’t an immediate, “No.” It was, “Hey, why do you want this information? What are you going to do with it?”

They never answered those questions. They just wanted to intimidate us to get the information. Well, we’re starting to see why they want that information: to build a national voter roll. There are so many potentials for false positives in the SAVE system (a federal voter roll administered by the Department of Homeland Security) that we have to assume that there are voters being inappropriately flagged as ineligible when they’re eligible. That’s a violation of a fundamental Constitutional right.

The data privacy issue is nonpartisan for voters. I spoke about this at an event in Carson City, mostly to an audience of Republicans, and I thought, “Here it comes.” After I was done speaking, the audience stood up and clapped. I realized that this is not a partisan issue. This comes down to the very fact that people want their private information protected. When they registered to vote, they agreed to give that information to the state of Nevada. Voters didn’t agree to give their data to third parties. So, we have to respect citizens’ expectations, and we have to keep them safe.