Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Nevada candidate: Outcome of SOS race could affect presidential election in 2024

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Francisco Aguilar is running as the Democratic nominee for Nevada secretary of state.

Two candidates running to be Nevada secretary of state offered starkly different visions of the approach to the job as the state’s top elections administrator in a Time magazine article.

The story, “Conspiracy Theorists Want to Run America’s Elections. These Are the Candidates Standing in Their Way” was published Tuesday on time.com. It highlights a large swath of Republican hopefuls running for office who subscribe to former President Donald Trump’s view that the 2020 election (which he lost by 74 electoral votes to Democrat Joe Biden) was “stolen” through widespread voter fraud despite multiple judges nationwide dismissing court cases claiming election fraud.

Experts warn that electing candidates who deny the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election to oversee future ones could imperil democracy itself, according to the story.

That includes Jim Marchant, the Republican nominee facing Democrat Francisco “Cisco” Aguilar in November to replace outgoing Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, a Republican who is term-limited.

Marchant, who in 2020 was defeated in a congressional bid, has appeared at various events around the country with Trump allies to cast doubt on the last presidential election.

“Computers are very, very hackable, and we just can’t trust ‘em,” Marchant told Time, alluding to a repeatedly debunked theory that voting machines were manipulated to change votes in favor of Trump to Biden.

Marchant was pressed about multiple audits that have disproved that claim, retorting that “those aren’t audits in the way that you can trust.”

Aguilar, a former member of the Nevada Athletic Commission and first-time office seeker, by contrast said defeating his rival was paramount because Nevada’s top election official should not have the power to sway a presidential election, he said.

Aguilar initially ran to streamline business licensing and enhance voter protections, but after Marchant won his party’s primary in June, the race would take on a different meaning, he told Time.

“This is now real,” Aguilar said. “This is no longer rhetoric. This is so serious that if I don’t win this election, it could affect the (presidential election) outcome in 2024.”

In a statement today Aguilar doubled down, saying: "My opponent and his allies are attempting to undermine democracy, in Nevada and around the country. If people don’t trust that their votes are being counted fairly, why should they bother to vote at all? That’s why this rhetoric is so dangerous: we only have a democracy if people believe in it, and my opponent is working hard to demolish that belief. I don’t have to win this race because of the 2020 election, I have to win it because of the 2024 election. All Nevadans deserve the right to vote for a president and be confident the winner is fairly elected."

Marchant's campaign didn't immediately respond to a request for comment about the article.

County election offices in Nevada identified between 93 and 98 potential cases of voter fraud during the 2020 campaign, less than 0.3% of Biden’s margin of victory of about 30,000 votes in the Silver State, according to an investigation by The Associated Press.

Cegavske repeatedly said she found no evidence of widespread voter fraud that would have affected the outcome of the Nevada vote in the 2020 presidential election.That earned her a rebuke from the Nevada Republican Party, which in April 2021 voted to censure Cegavske, accusing her of failing to fully investigate allegations of fraud in the 2020 election.

Along with holding events across the country, Marchant helped organize the “America First Secretary of State Coalition,” a group of candidates running to be their state’s top election official who have repeated Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election.

Marchant also has been working to persuade local officials to toss out voting equipment and instead require that all ballots be filled outand counted by hand.

Hand-counting all ballots is not only unreliable, labor-intensive and time-consuming, but also unnecessary, according to election experts. Testing before elections and audits afterward is intended to ensure that votes are recorded accurately and that any problems are identified before election results are certified.

The federal government’s leading security experts declared the 2020 presidential election “the most secure in American history.” Even Trump’s attorney general at the time said there was no fraud that would have altered the results. There has been no concrete evidence to suggest Trump was cheated out of a second term.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.