On June 2, a federal judge in Massachusetts will hear arguments over whether President Donald Trump’s latest executive order on mail ballots is unconstitutional. The litigation comes just one week before Nevada holds its June 9 primary elections.

Signed by Trump on March 31, the order, titled “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections,” seeks to overhaul Americans’ ability to vote by mail by creating federal citizenship lists to determine voter eligibility and directing the U.S. Postal Service to withhold mail ballots from those not on the list. It also threatens election officials with criminal prosecution and loss of federal funding for those who do not comply.

Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford is now co-leading a 24-state coalition in a lawsuit seeking to block the order, arguing that it unconstitutionally subverts states’ authority to administer their own elections. As Nevada’s chief election administrator, Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar has been a close public ally in the effort. And while both officials say they’re confident the order shouldn’t impact the June 9 primary, they are less certain on the November midterms.

“You cannot truly change the rules in the middle of the game. That would be detrimental to the overall process,” Aguilar tells the Weekly. “I believe the courts would understand the circumstances and facts around the primary election, so I think Nevadans can be confident that the election is going to run as it has in the past.”

With the state’s mail ballot process for absentee voters already underway as of April 24, Aguilar notes that many Nevadans—especially military members serving overseas—have already begun the voting process. He believes this reduces the likelihood of a last-minute disruption to the primary, due to the legal challenges that would inevitably pop up.

Ford—a candidate in the June 9 Democratic gubernatorial primary—shares a similar view, noting that he’s more focused on ensuring the executive order doesn’t influence the November midterms. It’s why the coalition opted to file an April 24 motion for summary judgment—a legal strategy in which one party asks the court to permanently block an order without trial—rather than the temporary pause that’s more frequently granted via a preliminary injunction. 

Ford says the coalition believes it’s an open and closed case. 

“This is an overstep of constitutional authority, and we think the [summary judgment] strategy is sufficient for us to be able to preserve the elections,” Ford tells the Weekly. 

The court has set a May 7 deadline for the Trump administration to file its response to the summary judgment ahead of a June 2 hearing. Ford says Trump’s team has also submitted a motion to transfer the case from the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts to Washington D.C., which the coalition has formally opposed. 

Aguilar—a Democrat who will automatically advance to the November general election in his reelection bid—believes that federal oversight is unnecessary in a state where he says 86% of voters have cast a mail ballot at least once since 2022, including 45% in 2024. He also points to what he calls an efficient process, citing the MIT Election Data and Science Lab’s April release of its 2024 Elections Performance Index, which ranked Nevada’s election administration process second behind only Minnesota—up from 13th in 2020.

Should the courts rule in favor of the executive order, both Ford and Aguilar warn the consequences for Nevada voters could be significant—particularly for rural voters who typically live much further from their nearest polling place. As one of just eight universal mail ballot states, Nevada automatically sends ballots to every active registered voter, meaning Trump’s proposed USPS list could potentially impact every active voter in the state.

“The fact that Nye County and Douglas County—some of our reddest counties—have some of the highest mail ballot participation makes us think this is not just a party issue,” Aguilar says. “This is about ensuring Nevadans have access to the ballot box, no matter where they live or how they choose to participate.”

Aguilar says the potential criminal prosecution of election workers could set a dangerous precedent, but he remains confident this won’t come to pass, either.

“They’re trying to get local election officials to bend to their will. ... But it’s hard to get a criminal charge,” Aguilar says. “The fact that they don’t understand is that election officials live in their communities, and they’re not going to be intimidated by a guy sitting in Washington D.C. when they have accountability and responsibility to their neighbors.

“The Constitution clearly states in plain language that states have the responsibility to run their own elections,” Aguilar says. “It’s part of the security system to ensure that elections run well and that they are not influenced by a single individual. Nor does a single individual have the ability to put their thumb on the scale to change the outcome of elections, because that’s basically called a dictator.”

Ford calls the executive order “the quintessential example of presidential overreach.” 

“The branches of government have legal separations for this exact purpose—to ensure that our country continues to operate in the democratic fashion that it was contemplated and not subjected to the whims of the executive branch,” he says.

Every Democratic member of Nevada’s Congressional delegation has publicly opposed the order, with Senators Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen co-sponsoring Senate legislation that would block it from taking effect. Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo hasn’t directly weighed in on the executive order itself, but he vetoed a Nevada Legislature bill last year that would have expanded the number of ballot drop boxes statewide.

In an email, Lombardo’s communications director Drew Galang told the Weekly, “Governor Lombardo believes elections should be run by the states but supports common sense reforms to Nevada law that strengthen the integrity of our elections. He led the effort to put voter ID on the ballot and has called for ending universal mail ballots, believing only registered qualified military, or voters who request a mail ballot, should get mail ballots.”

Trump’s executive order isn’t the only threat to voting rights heading into November. On April 29, the Supreme Court voted 6-3 to significantly narrow the Voting Rights Act in a Louisiana redistricting case—a decision critics say will make it harder to challenge racially discriminatory congressional maps ahead of the November election. 

This summer, the Supreme Court is expected to issue another ruling on whether states can count mail ballots that arrive after election day, which could potentially impact Nevada and the 13 other states that currently allow the practice.

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