Nevada's Secretary of State’s Stonewall Just Met Its Match: The Feds.
Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar has a favorite move.
When someone asks for information, he stonewalls. When someone pushes back, he cries privacy.
And when the numbers don't match his talking points, he calls them “speculative.”
We know this move well.
Citizen Outreach's Pigpen Project to assist in cleaning up Nevada’s dirty voter rolls has spent years trying to pry basic information out of Aguilar's office.
We've had to fight him in court just to get answers he should've handed over voluntarily.
And because we're a small non-profit, he's been able to slow-walk and obstruct us. He knows we don't have unlimited resources to fight “city hall.”
Ah, but the federal government does!
This week we learned Aguilar's office has quietly received seven Department of Justice subpoenas over the last three months related to elections and voters.
His office won't say what they're about. The New York Times reports the DOJ is after voter information.
Meanwhile, Homeland Security just launched a multi-state investigation into voter fraud, Nevada included.
Good. It's about time.
Aguilar's defenders will tell you elections are purely a state responsibility. That's only half true.
When a ballot includes a candidate for Congress or president, federal law absolutely has a role.
Noncitizen voting in a federal race isn't a state matter. It's a federal crime. Washington has every right to make sure Nevada's rolls are clean.
And here's the thing about Aguilar's “speculative” defense.
Back in July, DHS said it identified as many as 15,903 possible noncitizens on Nevada's voter rolls. Aguilar dismissed the number outright.
Fair enough, it needed verification.
But in a follow-up meeting, federal officials confirmed 185 names through manual review, with thousands more still being checked.
One hundred eighty-five confirmed noncitizens on Nevada's voter rolls.
Not thousands. Not the headline number. But 185 real people who had no legal right to be registered in the first place.
That's not nothing. And it's certainly not “speculative” anymore.
You don't get to claim there's nothing wrong with the rolls while refusing to let anyone independently check them.
You especially don't get to make that claim while actively resisting the people trying to look.
Aguilar isn't out there hunting for noncitizen voters. He's fighting the people who are.
As for the privacy excuse? It doesn't hold up, especially on Social Security numbers.
Those numbers are issued by the federal government in the first place. Washington isn't asking Nevada for something it doesn't already have a right to see.
If Aguilar has nothing to hide, he has nothing to fear from seven subpoenas.
The fact that his office is treating this like a hostile invasion, rather than a routine compliance check, tells you something.
Nevada voters have a right to know their vote counts the same as everyone else's. Not diluted by someone who was never eligible to cast one in the first place.
Aguilar's job is to protect that right, not shield the people breaking it from scrutiny.
Every subpoena the feds send, every question we've been asking through the Pigpen Project, comes down to the same simple demand: If the voter rolls are clean, prove it. If not, fix it.
Nevada voters aren't asking for anything more than that. And they shouldn't have to ask twice.
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