LAS VEGAS — A lawsuit claims up to 11,000 foreign nationals are registered to vote in the key battleground state of Nevada because Democratic Secretary of State Francisco “Cisco” Aguilar is ignoring his obligations to keep voting rolls clean.
The Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee and the Nevada Republican Party filed the lawsuit against Aguilar on Thursday in Carson City Judicial District Court.
A total of 6,360 people listed in the Nevada Department of Transportation's “non-citizen file” were registered to vote in 2020, and 3,987 of them voted in that year's general election, according to the lawsuit.
Republicans say state data suggests more than 11,000 foreign nationals are registered to vote this year, and that more than 3,700 are estimated to vote in November's presidential election.
Nevada will become an “all-mail” voting state in 2022, meaning registered voters will automatically be sent a ballot but will have early voting locations open so they can vote in person. This year, 98.4% of primary election ballots were mailed.
Republican Adam Laxalt lost the 2022 U.S. Senate election to Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto by 8,000 votes, a margin of about four votes per district.
The result was so close that Republicans have said they intend to purge ineligible voters from the rolls.
Last month, Aguilar's office designated about 140,000 inactive voters out of the state's nearly 2.4 million registered voters, including the majority of them, 116,322 in strongly Democratic Clark County, which includes Las Vegas.
But Republicans say Governor Aguilar needs to do more to remove foreigners from the electoral register.
“Any effort to allow non-citizens to vote threatens the very foundation of our elections and weakens the power of lawful voters across the state,” said Nevada Republican Party Chairman Michael McDonald. “This is not just a legal issue. It's about protecting the rights of Nevadans and upholding the integrity of our elections.”
The state Democratic Party, which is named in the lawsuit along with Aguilar and the Democratic National Committee, did not respond to The Washington Post's request for comment.
Aguilar's office denied the allegations, telling The Washington Post that “numerous safeguards” had already been put in place. “Any allegations of widespread problems are false and would only sow distrust in our elections,” the office said.
“It is already illegal for foreign nationals to vote in federal elections and conspiracies of widespread fraud are baseless. Voting is safe, fair and effective. We will fight this misinformation and defeat Republicans fair and square in the courts and at the ballot box in November,” a Democratic National Committee spokesman told The Post.
“There's no question that foreign nationals will be on the voter rolls,” Christian Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a Virginia voter protection group, told The Washington Post. But he said he doubted any meaningful relief would be available by Election Day.
Adams, whose group this year tracked down Nevada voters who registered addresses in strip clubs, coffee shops and vacant lots, said the real solution is to change the National Voter Registration Act to allow private citizens to sue to have noncitizens removed from the voter rolls.
He also said the Election Assistance Commission should allow states to make their own rules on voter registration, but that's not currently allowed.
The Republican National Committee said Friday that it had forced Minnesota, the home state of Democratic vice presidential nominee Gov. Tim Walz, to remove “more than 1,000 potentially non-citizen voters.”
Republicans said Governor Walz instituted “automatic” voter registration at the DMV and the state's “drivers license for all” policy allows foreign nationals to be placed on the state's voter rolls.
Those voters are currently listed as “inactive” pending a review of their respective registrations, the party said.
