# Cisco Aguilar Democratic **Secretary of State of Nevada**, in office since **January 2, 2023**. He is the chief elections officer of a state decided by roughly two points in the last two presidential cycles, which is why his office keeps turning up at the center of national fights over voter rolls, mail ballots and certification. Formally **Francisco V. Aguilar**; he uses Cisco. Before the office he was an attorney in Las Vegas — law clerk to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, special counsel to the chancellor of the Nevada System of Higher Education, general counsel to the Andre Agassi Foundation for Education — and served eight years on the Nevada Athletic Commission, two of them as chairman, appointed by Republican governors Jim Gibbons and Brian Sandoval. He holds bachelor's, M.B.A. and J.D. degrees from the University of Arizona. ## The 2022 race and the 2026 rematch Aguilar reached the office by beating an election denier for it. In the **2022** open-seat general election he defeated Republican [[Jim Marchant]] — founder of the America First Secretary of State Coalition, the multi-state slate of [[Stop the Steal]] candidates running to control election machinery — **496,569 votes (48.9%) to 473,467 (46.7%)**, a margin of about two points. **The same two men are on the ballot again on November 3, 2026.** Marchant won a contested Republican primary on **June 9, 2026** — a race not called until **June 15** — finishing ahead of Shirley Folkins-Roberts, who carried Governor [[Joe Lombardo]]'s endorsement, and former state assemblywoman and 2010 Senate nominee Sharron Angle. Aguilar was unopposed for the Democratic nomination and is seeking a second term. > [!note] Why the rematch matters more than the first race > 2022 was read at the time as the election-denial movement's ceiling: Marchant and most of his coalition lost, and that result became the standard evidence that the firewall held. A **primary electorate returning the same nominee four years later, over a sitting Republican governor's own candidate**, is evidence pointing the other way — that the 2022 defeats removed the candidates without removing the constituency. See [[Election Denialism]] and [[2026 Key State Races Hub]]. Marchant campaigned on eliminating electronic voting machines, ending universal mail voting and requiring hand-counted paper ballots, and called the primary result "a victory for voter ID." Both men have run against each other on the same axis twice: whether Nevada's election administration is a problem to be dismantled or a system to be defended. ## Chief elections officer under federal pressure, 2026 Aguilar spent 2026 as one of the most-quoted state officials pushing back on federal intervention in election administration — a role amplified by his chairmanship of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State. **The noncitizen-voter numbers that collapsed under checking.** In **July 2026**, [[Donald Trump]] and Homeland Security Secretary [[Markwayne Mullin]] announced more than **270,000** noncitizens on the voter rolls of four states, with the Nevada figure put at **15,903**. [[Department of Homeland Security]] officials conceded to Nevada election officials in **August 2026** that the number was inflated and sent over a list of **185** people the department said it had manually confirmed. Nevada checked all 185 and reported back on **Tuesday, September 22, 2026** that every one of them is a U.S. citizen. > [!quote] Cisco Aguilar, September 2026 > "Our records do not support DHS's claims, and DHS has still not provided evidence to change that. Instead, DHS officials continue their attempts to intimidate election officials into compliance and deter voters with huge claims of fraud with no evidence." **The voter-roll letters.** On **September 10, 2026** the [[Department of Justice]] — whose district-court record in its campaign to seize statewide voter-registration databases stood at 0 for 23 — sent letters to more than thirty top state election officials telling them they "are currently under investigation" and ordering them not to destroy 2024 election records that state law already requires them to keep. > [!quote] Cisco Aguilar, on the DOJ letters > "The constant 'flood the zone' of harassment and intimidation and threats of legal action hoping we'd fold at some point." Both episodes are recorded in full on [[Voter Suppression]], and both fit the pattern that page's [[Lawfare]] material describes: the claim that does not survive checking still imposes the cost of being checked. ## EAC vacancy and DASS As DASS chair, Aguilar became a leading state-level voice against the emptying of the [[Election Assistance Commission]]. In **July 2026**, after Trump fired both Democratic commissioners (Ben Hovland and Thomas Hicks) and allowed Republican Christy McCormick to resign, the commission was left with no commissioners at all ahead of the midterms — meaning it cannot certify voting systems, update election-security standards, or process the proof-of-citizenship form changes [[America First Legal]] had petitioned for under Trump's March 2025 executive order. ## Record in office As chief elections officer he has prioritized election-worker protection — backing the bipartisan Nevada legislation, signed by Governor [[Joe Lombardo]], that made harassing an election worker a felony — alongside ballot-access measures, in a state under sustained scrutiny of its results. ## See Also - [[Jim Marchant]] — his 2022 opponent and his 2026 opponent - [[2026 Key State Races Hub]] · [[Battleground Election Officials Hub]] · [[State Officials Hub]] · [[2026 Midterms Hub]] - [[Voter Suppression]] — the DHS and DOJ episodes in full - [[Markwayne Mullin]] — the DHS Secretary who announced the Nevada figure - [[Election Denialism]] · [[Stop the Steal]] · [[Lawfare]] - [[Election Assistance Commission]] · [[America First Legal]] - [[Adrian Fontes]] · [[Brad Raffensperger]] — counterparts in the other two most-contested election-administration states