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Nevadans gear up to protect election from federal interference

The Trump administration’s threat to take control of elections in several states and its refusal to rule out immigration agents at polling stations not only threatens the integrity of this year’s elections, but also amounts to voter suppression and intimidation, election advocates say.

Silver State Voices, the ACLU of Nevada, All Voting is Local, and Nevada Immigrant Coalition are sounding the alarm about overtures coming from Washington, which Silver State Voices Executive Director Emily Persaud-Zamora said are “designed to suppress and discourage us from participating actively in democracy.”

All Voting is Local Nevada State Director Kerry Durmick said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s refusal during a Feb. 5 press briefing to guarantee that Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) agents won’t be at polling stations spurred the groups to action.

Leavitt was asked about ICE agents at the polls after former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon said on his podcast “we’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November.”

“It’s important to say out loud what we are talking about,” Noé Orozco, coordinator of Nevada Immigrant Coalition, said in a statement. “We are talking about a constitutional right to vote. We are talking about turning democracy into an immigration checkpoint.”

Efforts to protect Nevada’s elections from Trump administration interference not only include progressive nonpartisan groups, but bipartisan organizations like the Democracy Defense Project in Nevada, which is spearheaded by former Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval and former assembly speaker Richard Perkins.

Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar told the* Current *he has been in conversations with county management and sheriffs in both Clark and Washoe counties regarding the matter.

“In Nevada, it’s a felony to arrest or intimidate an election worker or intimidate a voter,” he said, adding that he is also working with attorneys to understand jurisdictional issues.

Aguilar praised Nevada’s U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto for specifically including polling locations as a protected area from ICE as part of her “guardrails” demand in order to fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which ICE falls under. Senate Democrats blocked a bill to fund the department last week, and an ongoing shutdown of the agency continues, though ICE ICE and Customs and Border Protection operations have continued under funding provided in the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

After Aguilar spoke with *the Current *Feb. 24, state election officials from several states joined a video meeting with representatives from the FBI, DHS, federal Election Assistance Commission, U.S. Department of Justice, and U.S. Postal Inspection Service the following day.

Several secretaries of state came away from the meeting alarmed, with Colorado’s saying the administration has “lost credibility,” and Oregon’s complaining the administration officials presented “bluster and not a lot of facts.”

DHS told state election officials during the call that suggestions of ICE deploying at polling stations was not true. Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes told the Arizona Mirror that he was not relieved by the guarantee as it came from Heather Honey, an election denier that was appointed to a senior role in DHS.

Contacted following the Feb. 25 video meeting, the Nevada secretary of state’s office did not provide comment.

Election advocates are unified behind a nonpartisan election protection program in response to the threats, as they have in previous cycles.

The ACLU of Nevada in 2024 filed litigation against Nye County for restricting a nonpartisan staff member from observing election procedures. The county later settled, promising that no restrictions will be imposed on party affiliation if accommodations are available.

“This will be the largest legal observer program we’ve ever had,” Athar Haseebullah, executive director of ACLU of Nevada, said in a statement. “We hope that everybody, regardless of how they vote, is able to properly cast their vote, and again, if local or state elected officials want to try, we’re here to serve as a counter response to efforts to undermine our election system.”

The election protection program has a larger focus in the two largest counties, Clark and Washoe, but it expands to other counties as well, noted Persaud-Zamora. Poll monitors go through rigorous training in order to know what to look out for, and can call a command center, which will also be formed by the program, in order to report any issues. Persaud-Zamora noted that Silver State Voices is the state affiliate of a national voting rights hotline as well.

Both Aguilar and advocates stressed the importance of accessibility in elections, particularly with Nevada’s mail ballot.

Passports, please?

Nevadans will vote once more this November on Question 7, a ballot question which would require voters to present identification to vote in person, as well as providing a driver’s license number, last four digits of their Social Security number, or a number provided by their county clerk when they registered to vote.

Supporters of Question 7, which voters approved decisively in 2024, describe the proposal as common sense election reform, while opponents say it could disenfranchise people who don’t have an acceptable form of ID.

Though noncitizens are already legally unable to vote in the U.S., that did not stop the U.S. House from passing the SAVE America Act, which aims to make sweeping changes on voter registration in response to voter fraud—an unsubstantiated claim that research demonstrates is rare and inconsequential to the outcome of elections.

Under the bill, which has been stalled in the Senate, U.S. citizenship must be proven to register to vote through a birth certificate, U.S. passport, naturalization paperwork and “enhanced” REAL ID driver licenses that indicate citizenship status.

Only five states in the country have enhanced REAL ID. Nevada is not one of them. The bill would render any Nevadan voting with a REAL ID unable to vote in federal elections.

“It’s terrible. It’s horrendous, and it’s detrimental to voters, especially women voters,” Aguilar said.

Approximately 69 million American women have taken their spouse’s name, no longer matching the name on their birth certificates, according to the Center for American Progress. Women who have legally changed their names, for various reasons, could face similar challenges to vote.

The implementation of the SAVE America Act would impact a certain portion of rural voters and cause an administrative burden on county election clerks, according to Aguilar, as they do not have the resources.

“This is what happens when you have a bunch of people write policies that never themselves understood the process, or took the time to learn the challenges that are faced by election administrators,” he added.

Universal mail voting would also be prohibited under the bill’s provisions, which is a principal method of voting in Nevada. Rural Nevadans are geographically most helped by voting by mail, Durmick said, even more so than urban communities.

“This is about access to the ballot box and access to your vote. It doesn’t matter who you are—this is going to impact all of us,” Durmick added.

The Nevada Democratic House delegation all voted against the bill. U.S. Rep. Mark Amodei, the sole Nevada Republican in Congress, voted in support, despite he and Nevada Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo urging Nevadans to vote early or by mail in 2024.

Both of Nevada’s Democratic U.S. senators are expected to vote against the bill and Senate Republicans would need to sidestep the filibuster rule in order to pass it.

Trump’s threat to ‘take over the voting’

Trump urged Republicans to seize voting operations in a number of states, saying that “we should take over the voting in at least many—15 places—the Republicans ought to nationalize the voting,” while speaking on the podcast of Dan Bongino, his former FBI deputy director, on Feb. 2.

However, the only states and Congress are able to regulate federal elections, not the president.

A 17-page draft executive order is being circulated by pro-Trump activists, who say they are in coordination with the White House, which would “declare a national emergency that would unlock extraordinary presidential power over voting,” according to The Washington Post.

The Democracy Defense Project in Nevada released a statement reaffirming that Nevada’s elections are safe and denouncing Trump’s statement.

“Rhetoric about ‘nationalizing’ elections is dangerous because of the doubt it can cast on the hardworking election officials here in Nevada,” said former Speaker of the Assembly Richard Perkins, co-chair of DDP Nevada.

Sandoval, the former Nevada Republican governor, expressed “full confidence” in the state’s elections, and support for the election staff and volunteers who “keep it secure and accountable.”

Trump later doubled down on his comments in an interview with NBC, specifically listing Atlanta, Philadelphia and Detroit as targets.

Though Trump did not list what other places make up his list, Nevada, an important battleground state, has faced its own share of electoral denialism. Trump’s legal and campaign teams choreographed submitting fake Nevada Republican presidential electors after his loss in the 2020 presidential election, according to information released by the Jan. 6 insurrection House panel investigation.

Nevada has some of the most safe, secure and accessible elections in the country, Aguilar said. He noted that his office will continue to fight for universal mail voting, and has extended the digital voting program to individuals that are homebound due to disability and for tribal members on tribal lands.

“We’re fighting every avenue we can and we are using every tool in our toolbox to make sure that we’re prepared for any situation,” Aguilar said.

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