Donald Trump’s campaign and other GOP groups have filed a lawsuit alleging that Nevada fails to remove noncitizens from its voter rolls — Republicans’ fourth lawsuit challenging the state’s electoral procedures this year.
In the new lawsuit filed in Carson City District Court on Thursday, the Trump campaign, Nevada GOP, Republican National Committee and a Clark County voter are accusing Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar of improper list maintenance and failing to investigate if registered voters are noncitizens.
They allege that the state has not adopted any regulations to verify that people on the voter rolls are citizens or that the state systemically removed noncitizens from the voter rolls, therefore violating their duties. Republicans, they argue, are seeing their votes diluted by that system, and therefore are asking the court to require the state to address the issue through more aggressive list maintenance.
The Democratic National Committee and the Nevada Democratic Party are named in the suit as defendants as well (citing a ruling in an election law case earlier this year requiring political parties seeking relief that would affect their opponent to include the other major political party in the suit).
Republicans’ prior three lawsuits in Nevada — challenging the length of time that mail ballots can be received, voter roll maintenance practices and the counting of mail ballots with unclear postmarks — have been dismissed or denied, though all are in various stages of appeal.
No state, including Nevada, permits noncitizens to vote in federal elections — doing so is a crime punishable by fine and prison time, and those found guilty can face deportation or changes to their immigration status. An analysis from the conservative Heritage Foundation found only 24 cases of such voter fraud since 2003, none in Nevada. At the same time, there is no Voter ID law on the books; instead, voters are matched to their signatures.
The Trump campaign’s lawsuit claims that thousands of noncitizens were on the voter rolls in December 2020, “many of whom cast a ballot.” The suit acknowledges that such reports of electoral fraud were dismissed by Republican then-Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske.
At the time, the Nevada Republican Party compared lists of people who presented immigration documents to obtain licenses at the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles with the statewide registration list to identify potential noncitizens. In investigating those claims, the secretary of state’s report concluded that there were about 4,000 people who voted in 2020 and had presented an immigration document at the DMV, but that more than 40,000 immigrants had naturalized in Nevada during the prior four years. The report found no evidence of foreign nationals voting and said that “generalized information acquired from DMV cannot serve as a basis for an investigation into alleged voter fraud.”
But the lawsuit argues that Cegavske’s conclusions were insufficient and based on an incorrect understanding of prior Supreme Court cases. Further, the campaign claims that a biannual survey from Harvard University’s Cooperative Election Study included a number of noncitizen respondents who claimed in the poll that they are registered to vote — and that the rate is higher in Nevada (4 percent) than the national average (about 2.5 percent). And Republicans also cite public records finding that about 8 percent of the prospective jury pool in Washoe County District Court claimed disqualification because they were noncitizens — and that jury pools are in part compiled through voter registration lists.
"Nevada’s elections should be a reflection of its citizens’ voices, not influenced by non-citizens who have no legal standing to participate,” Nevada GOP chairman Michael McDonald. “Any efforts to allow non-citizens to vote threatens the very foundation of our elections and diminishes the power of lawful voters across our state.”
The lawsuit notes that other states have removed noncitizens from the voter rolls, including Texas, where Republican Gov. Greg Abbott claimed to have purged 6,500 noncitizens in late August. Many election experts caution that these cases often mischaracterize routine voter maintenance, and that the so-called noncitizen removals are typically people who have been erroneously identified as noncitizens, and are often recently naturalized citizens.
Republicans allege that not only is noncitizen voting a problem, but that it “favors Democratic candidates and harms Republican candidates.”
The plaintiffs are asking for the state to step in and require Aguilar to verify that all registered voters are U.S. citizens, suggesting that the state use citizenship verification programs. House Republicans have promoted a similar argument, passing a bill in July to mandate that prospective voters provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote — such a law was struck down in Arizona as a violation of the Voting Rights Act, because citizenship can often be difficult to prove, including for college students and other transient populations.
The Kamala Harris campaign and Democrats have argued in court filings that Republicans’ lawsuits are a public effort to sow doubt in the election before it begins, regardless of the outcomes of the cases. The Trump campaign filed a barrage of election litigation challenging results in 2020. Despite losing 59 of 60 cases, the unproven allegations of electoral fraud have stuck — about 30 percent of Americans, per polling, do not trust the government to properly certify elections.