EDITORIAL: Nevada’s secretary of state hinders effort to identify noncitizens on voter rolls

Removing noncitizens from Nevada’s voter rolls should be a bipartisan priority. Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar acts otherwise.

The Department of Homeland Security is working to identify noncitizens who are registered to vote. The department is focusing its efforts in several states, including Nevada. This comes after President Donald Trump this summer asserted there are more than 250,000 noncitizens — across a number of states — on the voter rolls.

The Department of Homeland Security claim included nuances. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said his agency “has identified over 250,000 potential non-citizens illegally registered to vote in just four U.S. states.” Nevada was one of those states. In July, DHS said there “may be as many as ... 15,903 non-citizens registered to vote in Nevada.”

Mr. Aguilar expressed skepticism. “There are numerous safeguards in place to prevent noncitizens, or anyone ineligible to vote, from casting a ballot,” he said. He defends non-cooperation with the feds as a means of protecting the privacy of Nevadans. Fine.

But while it’s true that many of Mr. Trump’s past election fraud claims are short on facts and likely exaggerated, there’s no evidence that the DHS is acting recklessly. The agency held a meeting with officials in Mr. Aguilar’s office to discuss the claims and to explore ways to work together. In a follow-up email, Kimberley Vogt, fraud division chief for the Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate, wrote that she sent a spreadsheet with 185 Nevada voter IDs that her agency confirmed were noncitizens while registered to vote.

Yet Mark Wlaschin, Nevada’s deputy secretary of state for elections, made it seem as if DHS had dramatically changed its original number. That is not the case. “We did not reduce the 15,903 to 185,” Ms. Vogt emailed back. “We’ve manually reviewed some of the 15,903 and confirmed 185 are not U.S. citizens. We still have 14,000+ that still need additional review.”

But the facts didn’t stop media outlets such as The New York Times from implying the department walked back its original claim. This allowed mainstream outlets to bury the headline news. After a manual review of some flagged Nevada voter registrations, DHS said it found 185 noncitizens on Nevada voter rolls. How is that possible if the system is working effectively?

Unfortunately, many act as if exposing potential flaws in election security is a bad thing if Republicans and Mr. Trump can use it to gain political advantage. But ignoring evidence is the wrong approach. Mr. Aguilar should take this information seriously and be more diligent about acting on it.