Declare contributor Stephen Richer speaks with Nevada secretary of state Cisco Aguilar about his office’s experience with the Department of Homeland Security after it identified 185 suspected noncitizen voters who the state determined were in fact citizens after further investigation.
“I have to understand how they’re classifying and identifying voters. And without additional identifiers [beyond] name and address, I can’t give credit to what they’re giving me. So then I asked the team, ‘Take the information you do have [from DHS], pull the records for every one of those voters, look at the original voter registration form, look at the identification used to identify that voter, and let’s see what we have,” Aguilar says in the interview. “And they did. And they came back and were like, ‘We’re at zero.’”
In July, Homeland Security secretary Markwayne Mullin announced that his agency’s “preliminary” review of Nevada’s roll discovered about 16,000 potential noncitizens. Further review of a portion of that number led DHS to identify 185 noncitizens with a higher degree of confidence, which it communicated to the state in August.
Nevada election workers performed their own inquiry into each individual record, using social security data and eligibility checks that the federal government lacks, to reach their determination that none of the 185 suspected noncitizens actually met that designation.
“We then decided, you know, we have to send a response back to DHS, so they’re not sitting there wondering what we did. And we sent them a very thorough email that explained exactly what we did, why what they were doing was giving us concern, and then they put out a press release saying we’re a bunch of liars, and that they were just trying to help Nevadans. I was like, you’re actually hurting Nevadans, more than anything.”
According to Aguilar, “That’s where we are today,” in terms of how the process has proceeded and apparently been resolved.
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Nevada’s Secretary of State Details Interaction with DHS over Noncitizen Voting
Declare contributor Stephen Richer speaks with Nevada secretary of state Cisco Aguilar about his office’s experience with the Department of Homeland Security after it identified 185 suspected noncitizen voters who the state determined were in fact citizens after further investigation.
“I have to understand how they’re classifying and identifying voters. And without additional identifiers [beyond] name and address, I can’t give credit to what they’re giving me. So then I asked the team, ‘Take the information you do have [from DHS], pull the records for every one of those voters, look at the original voter registration form, look at the identification used to identify that voter, and let’s see what we have,” Aguilar says in the interview. “And they did. And they came back and were like, ‘We’re at zero.’”
In July, Homeland Security secretary Markwayne Mullin announced that his agency’s “preliminary” review of Nevada’s roll discovered about 16,000 potential noncitizens. Further review of a portion of that number led DHS to identify 185 noncitizens with a higher degree of confidence, which it communicated to the state in August.
Nevada election workers performed their own inquiry into each individual record, using social security data and eligibility checks that the federal government lacks, to reach their determination that none of the 185 suspected noncitizens actually met that designation.
“We then decided, you know, we have to send a response back to DHS, so they’re not sitting there wondering what we did. And we sent them a very thorough email that explained exactly what we did, why what they were doing was giving us concern, and then they put out a press release saying we’re a bunch of liars, and that they were just trying to help Nevadans. I was like, you’re actually hurting Nevadans, more than anything.”
According to Aguilar, “That’s where we are today,” in terms of how the process has proceeded and apparently been resolved.
Check out and subscribe to more of Declare’s YouTube content by clicking here.
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Democratic States Get the Brunt of Noncitizen Voting Doubts, with Little to Say or Do
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