Flaming the Electoral Fire

Nevada’s top election official, Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar, a Democrat, has instructed local election directors to halt investigations into thousands of names still on the voter rolls despite those individuals having moved out of state. This decision has sparked backlash from Citizens Outreach Foundation, a watchdog group that has now taken legal action against four Nevada jurisdictions to force a review of the state’s voter registration lists.

The lawsuit stems from an August memo sent by Aguilar’s office. The plaintiff, led by Citizens Outreach Foundation, seeks a court order demanding local election offices process or review challenges to specific voters’ names.

In what Citizens Outreach Foundation President Chuck Muth calls a “David vs. Goliath” battle, the well-financed forces of the Left have swooped in to oppose any efforts to maintain accurate voter lists. Among these opponents are Democratic super-lawyer Marc Elias and the American Civil Liberties Union.

The foundation flagged the questionable names using data from voter registration files cross-referenced with the U.S. Postal Service’s change-of-address list. “Several counties had started to process the challenges, until the secretary of state memo,” Muth explained to The Daily Signal. “After that, they said that in light of the secretary’s memo, we are not going to process.”

Facing roadblocks, Citizens Outreach Foundation saw litigation as its last resort, claiming that election clerks “got caught between a rock and a hard place.” The organization is now suing Clark County — Nevada’s largest jurisdiction — as well as Washoe County, Carson City, and Storey County.

Muth’s organization launched the Pigpen Project, focused on cleaning up Nevada’s voter registration rolls. He emphasized that addressing these flagged names is crucial in ensuring ineligible voters do not receive mail-in ballots. Initially, the foundation flagged just under 4,000 names for election clerks in late July. But after further investigation in August and September, the total number of flagged names statewide has ballooned to around 33,000.

Muth clarified that this review was limited to those who had moved out of state. The foundation did not look into the presence of noncitizens or deceased voters on the rolls.

When asked for comment, a spokesperson for the Nevada Secretary of State’s Office stated, “We cannot comment due to ongoing litigation.”

Americans Already Don’t Trust Our Elections

The American people are more concerned with election integrity than they have been in some time, and actions like those from Aguilar are only making matters worse.

According to recent polling data out from Gallup, a whopping 43% of people are either not too confident or not confident at all about the accuracy of U.S. election results.

Of course, after all of the sudden law changes during the COVID-19 pandemic and the entire fiasco surrounding the 2020 election, Republicans have seen the largest drop in confidence, with 55% saying they are very or somewhat confident in election results in 2016 compared to only 28% today.

What are the major concerns? The Gallup data asked if Americans thought these four things were major problems:

1. People using illegal or fraudulent means to cast votes (47%)
2. Votes cast by people who, by law, are not eligible to vote (44%)
3. Defeated candidates refusing to concede their loss (48%)
4. Eligible voters not being allowed to cast a vote (34%)

How can our country continue with confidence if a large swath of the people believe non-citizens are voting and fraud is happening? Put another way, how can we continue when plenty of people feel like we’re living in a banana republic? Let us know in the comments below!