‘We Have to Punch Back’: Top Nevada Official Prepares For Possible Election Havoc From Trump

Cisco Aguilar believes this Election Day will be unlike any other in Nevada’s history. He is bracing for immigration agents to descend on polling locations, for federal law enforcement to move to seize ballots and for the President to openly dispute the state’s election results.“If this administration chooses to challenge the elections, yes, we are preparing for it,” Aguilar, Nevada’s secretary of state and top election official, tells TIME. “We know it's a very high probability,” Aguilar has spent much of the year planning around what the federal government might do in his state on Nov. 3. Nevada hasn’t been a focus of the national political discussion during this year’s midterm elections. While some of its House races are among those that could decide whether Republicans hold on to the chamber, it doesn’t have a high profile Senate race like Michigan or Texas.Yet Nevada is a perennial swing state that draws intense interest from both parties in presidential election years. Trump won the state in 2024 by 3 percentage points. Nevada, Aguilar says, is the only state in the country to have received seven voter-related subpoenas from the Department of Justice this year. He has also be...