Nevada officials responded to President Donald Trump's plan to end mail-in voting and certain voting machines, citing concerns over "massive voter fraud." Trump planned an executive order to change the voting system before the 2026 midterm elections. Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar said, "We know that in Nevada, mail ballots are the preferred way to vote," and noted that mail-in voting helps those who cannot travel to polling places or have long commutes in rural areas, according to KTNV.
Legal experts are already signaling that any sweeping mandate from the Oval Office would be met with a flurry of legal challenges. Such an order would likely be bogged down in courts, especially with primaries fast-approaching. "Mail in ballots are corrupt you can never have a real democracy with mail in ballots," Trump expressed on Truth Social. He went on to criticize the speed and accuracy of the machinery for counting mail ballots, suggesting that a switch to paper ballots would yield much faster results: "The machines say we will get the results in two weeks but with paper ballots you have the results that night," Trump said, as reported by 8 News Now.
However, Aguilar pushed back against the notion that mail ballots were in any way detrimental to the electoral process. "Nevadans have accepted and adopted mail in ballots, and the reason is Nevada is a 24/7 economy. We are a working community. We want to have as many people participate in the process as possible," Aguilar explained, citing data from the 2024 election where 45% of Nevada's votes were mailed in. "We would get secure elections and much faster results," Trump argued, but Aguilar maintained that the convenience of mail-in ballots is essential for a state like Nevada, as he told 8 News Now.
Nevada has maintained a permanent option for mail-in voting since the pandemic. The shift in Republican strategies encouraging mail-in voting in the 2024 election led to higher turnouts and a win for Trump in Nevada; however, as "2024", a book by Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, and Isaac Arnsdorf, disclosed, Trump kept quiet about his true beliefs on mail-in voting until after the polls had closed, as mentioned by KTNV. Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar said a nationwide ban on mail-in ballots is unlikely, keeping election rules a key topic ahead of the 2026 midterms.
