VICTOR JOECKS: Nevada should use SAVE to find noncitizen voters

Every tired parent would recognize the approach Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar is taking to finding noncitizens on Nevada’s voter rolls.

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Department of Homeland Security can use the SAVE database to identify noncitizen voters. SAVE stands for Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements. More than 1,000 agencies use it to determine eligibility for government benefits and things such as drivers’ licenses. Because the federal government is responsible for immigration, this is the best database to determine if someone isn’t a citizen.

But there is one area where most Democrats don’t want to use it — checking voter rolls for noncitizens.

After the Supreme Court’s ruling, Gov. Joe Lombardo urged Aguilar to use the SAVE system to “verify citizenship status and voter eligibility.” Lombardo noted that the Pew Research Center has found that 85 percent of Americans agree it is important that “no ineligible voters are permitted to vote.” That’s common sense. Every vote by a noncitizen cancels out the vote of a citizen.

But Aguilar isn’t interested.

“There are already numerous safeguards in place to prevent noncitizens, or anyone ineligible to vote, from casting a ballot,” he said in a statement. “It’s a felony for those ineligible to knowingly register and vote in Nevada, and we do hold bad actors accountable.”

That sounds great — until you dig into the details. For one, the DMV says it will not automatically register someone who presents immigration documents. That’s good, but it’s hardly foolproof.

After the 2020 election, former Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske’s office put out a report on voter fraud claims. It found there were more than 4,000 people who presented an immigration document while obtaining drivers’ licenses and ID cards who then voted in the 2020 election. Instead of investigating, Cegavske’s office excused it away because they could have become citizens. Presumably some did — and presumably some didn’t. Those cases should have been investigated, not swept under the rug.

If noncitizens do try to register to vote, they simply have to check a box affirming they are a citizen. That’s it. That’s not a safeguard. It’s literal box checking. And it can even happen unintentionally.

So when the Department of Homeland Security says there may be more than 15,000 noncitizens on Nevada’s voter rolls, it’s plausible. And there’s an easy way to find out — use the SAVE program to identify possibilities and then investigate individuals.

But here is Aguilar’s problem, and it’s one every parent can relate to. Imagine telling your son to clean his room and put his clothes in his dresser. That’s not something he usually does. After just 10 minutes, you come into the room, and the clothes are off the floor. You then have a decision. Do you look in his dresser drawer to confirm he put his clothes away, instead of stuffing them under his bed? Or do you let it go because you know he probably didn’t obey but you need to get everyone out the door?

That’s analogous to what Aguilar is doing here. He refuses to use SAVE to open the dresser drawer because he knows Nevadans might not like what they find.