Nevada official wants clarity about noncitizens voters in state records

Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar wants the Trump administration to clarify statements it made this month claiming it found nearly 16,000 noncitizens in the state’s voter records.

“My office has long upheld the goal of ensuring that only eligible U.S. citizens vote in our elections,” Aguilar wrote in a Wednesday letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.

Aguilar, who previously described the figure as “wildly speculative at best,” included in the correspondence a list of inquiries about the DHS’s determinations and methodology.

“Against that backdrop, we want to better understand your claims that thousands of alleged noncitizens on Nevada’s voter rolls, again, none of which you have identified,” he added.

Aguilar was responding to a July 16 letter from Mullin, who wrote that a preliminary DHS review of Nevada voter registration records had identified as many as 15,903 noncitizens registered to cast a ballot in the state.

“As an example, we found 8,576 Nevada registrants for whom the name, date of birth, address and Social Security number match a non-citizen in our files,” the letter said. “The most efficient way to ensure the accuracy of our findings is to work collaboratively on identity verification.”

The agency offered no further evidence, at least publicly.

Part of a wider effort

A DHS document, declassified that same day, said that investigators had uncovered more than a quarter-million noncitizens on voter records in four states: Nevada, California, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

That night, President Donald Trump amplified the claim in a primetime speech. His remarks centered around unproven claims of widespread voter fraud he’s made since he lost his first re-election bid in 2020, including new allegations that China had meddled in that election and that the “deep state” had covered it up.

“Since Democrat states refuse to share their voter files, the real number is actually much higher than that,” Trump said, in part. “Yet even this limited analysis found more than a quarter of a million foreigners illegally registered to vote.”

Days later, New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill reported that about 6,600 residents who told the Motor Vehicle Commission that they were not citizens while obtaining driver’s licenses and state IDs were improperly registered to vote in 2023 and 2024 — before she took office. Blaming a Motor Vehicle Commission system software error, the Democrat said a preliminary investigation determined that fewer than 400 of those people went on to vote.

Nevada Democrats, including Aguilar, refuted Trump’s speech claims.

“Donald Trump may have forgotten, but he was President in 2020 and his Administration oversaw the election that year,” Sen. Jacky Rosen said in a statement. “Many investigations have shown that his allegations about the results of the 2020 election are wrong, and they’re nothing more than a desperate attempt to distract Americans from the problems he has caused for hardworking families.”

The Nevada Republican Party backed Trump, saying that the president was taking steps to ensure U.S. elections are safe and trusted by the electorate.

“These declassified materials include summations of foreign countries’ acquisition of voter files, vulnerabilities in electronic voting and counting systems, voter registration concerns, and non-citizens on voter rolls,” the party said in a statement.

Gov. Joe Lombardo’s office said it couldn’t comment on specific claims because the elections are overseen by the secretary of state.

Aguilar seeks more information

The White House on Wednesday deferred comment about Aguilar’s letter.

“DHS has not yet received a response from Secretary Aguilar, but we look forward to collaborating with Nevada to protect elections,” a spokesperson said in an email Thursday. The agency didn’t comment further.

In the letter, Aguilar noted Mullin’s offer for the DHS to help and said his office was open to good-faith collaboration.

He asked how investigators had arrived at the number; what data sources it used; how they matched registrants’ personal identifying information with its databases, and how they verified the findings.

Aguilar also inquired if the agency had used artificial intelligence, and how investigators accounted for common names, multi-unit addresses, shared addresses, and registrants who might’ve become citizens after the date of the data sets.

“We remain committed to ensuring that non-citizens are not registered or permitted to vote,” he wrote. “At the same time, we are equally committed to protecting eligible U.S. citizens — including naturalized citizens and citizens whose records may be imperfect — from being wrongly labeled as ‘non-citizens’ or subjected to improper removal efforts.”