Show me a politician and I’ll show you someone who wants to choose their voters.

It’s an understandable impulse. As the old saying goes, there are only two ways to run for office — scared or unopposed. Once you’re in office, it’s only natural to want to decrease the amount of fear you feel every time the candidate filing deadline draws near. That’s why the first thing every politician tries to do when given half of a chance is ensure that they’re only accountable to their friends and supporters by minimizing the number of opponents who might run or vote against them.

When this impulse is satisfied through geography, we call it gerrymandering.

Nevada is undeniably gerrymandered. Princeton University’s Gerrymandering Project gives Nevada’s congressional maps a failing grade due to the overt advantage they grant Democrats. That’s why a state that reliably produces a nearly even number of Republican and Democratic votes in statewide elections is currently represented by three Democrats and one Republican in the House of Representatives — and will likely continue to be thus represented for the remainder of the decade.

There are people who would like to do something about this, though none of them apparently serve the Nevada Supreme Court, which once again swatted away two petitions designed to address this problem. Many of these people, such as myself, are modern-day goo-goos, “good government” types who want to reform our political process so it’s a little less responsive to the naked self-interests of the politicians elected to lead it. Other supporters, meanwhile, are nakedly self-interested Republican partisans who openly support these reforms since, in Nevada at least, they’ll likely lead to less favorable legislative maps for Democrats (and, by extension, more favorable legislative maps for Republicans).

Fair enough. Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue. Given a choice between Republicans attempting to advance their cause through high-minded principles or whatever this hateful trash is, I know which one I’d prefer.

Even so, it has not escaped my attention that many of the same Republicans who would decry Nevada’s gerrymandered electoral maps are demanding a more pliant and restrictive electorate themselves.

The message, as always, starts from the top. After Donald Trump won the presidential election by securing a majority of the Electoral College votes in 2016, he insisted he also won the popular vote “if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” He repeated similar statements in 2020, claiming that “if you count the legal votes, I easily win.”

More recently, egged on by Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) introduced a bill to ban noncitizens from voting in federal elections. That, however, has been explicitly illegal since the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act was passed in 1996 — so what was his justification?

“We all know — intuitively — that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections,” Johnson claimed. “But it’s not something that is easily provable.”

To borrow a cliche from the conservative side of the aisle, facts don’t care about Johnson’s or Trump’s intuitions. 

The fact is, as previously stated, noncitizens are legally prohibited from voting in national elections. Additionally, every single state constitution — including ours and California’s — only grants the right to vote in statewide elections to citizens.

How often do noncitizens try to vote illegally? According to the Brennan Center, your average kindergartener can likely count high enough to count the number of noncitizens caught voting in the United States illegally in any given year. Considering how a majority of states have Republican secretaries of state, it’s certainly not for lack of effort. The first Republican secretary of state to find and successfully convict 100 noncitizen voters would likely become a vice presidential front-runner.

The only elections where noncitizens may legally vote in are local elections. Even then, that’s only permitted where localities are legally empowered to expressly grant the franchise to noncitizens. The most notable example where that’s occurred is, hilariously enough, the District of Columbia — by contrast, when San Francisco and New York City attempted to legalize noncitizen voting in their local elections, both efforts were found to be in violation of their respective state constitutions.

There isn’t a single county, city or township where noncitizens have the legal right to vote in Nevada. Since Nevada’s constitutional qualifications for the right to vote are similar to California’s and New York’s — two states where local governments tried and failed to allow noncitizens to vote — it would likely take a constitutional amendment to change that. Nobody currently in office has proposed one.

In short, the idea that there are hordes of noncitizens routinely voting against Republicans (or anyone else) is copium. Bunk. Sour grapes. Fake news.

None of that, however, has stopped some Republicans in Nevada from claiming otherwise. Based on two recent court cases, many Republicans apparently think there are noncitizens in the voter rolls and fake votes getting trucked in at the last minute. To address these, ah, intuitions, Republican candidates and activists propose mandatory voter identification, immediate deportations and an unnecessary amendment to the state Constitution.

The partisan political logic driving these demands is simple enough. Allowing non-Republicans to vote dilutes the power and voice of Republicans, which repeatedly alters the outcomes of elections in ways that do not reflect the will of Republicans. If Republicans were simply empowered to question the voter rolls, the election machines and the citizenship status of anyone they, ah, know — intuitively — might vote against them, the outcomes of future elections would become a foregone conclusion.

If you’re a Republican, I can understand why this argument is compelling. Since I’m not one, I remain unconvinced.

Most everyone (diplomatic immunity notwithstanding) within the boundaries of the United States is bound by the laws and regulations of this country’s government, just as those within the boundaries of Nevada are bound by the laws and regulations of our state’s government. Government, as our nation’s Declaration of Independence forcefully points out, derives its powers from the consent of the governed. 

Citizenship, properly understood, is the formal relationship between the governed and the government. The government recognizes the citizenship of those it’s empowered to govern. In return, the citizens either provide continuing and affirmative consent to the government, delegating powers where useful and prudent, or they replace the government with one that’s more to their liking.

Because legal immigration is nearly impossible, however, Nevada’s government cannot seek the consent of all it governs. Instead, bound by the chains of federal immigration law and the state Constitution, Nevada reliably seeks the consent of Californians who moved here six months ago while it simultaneously refuses to seek the consent of immigrants who moved here decades ago.

Nevada, in short, is in the same position the original Thirteen Colonies were in when Thomas Jefferson complained that the British government obstructed the laws allowing the naturalization of immigrants. If some of Nevada’s aspiring politicians were better students of our nation’s history and less blinded by partisan political concerns, they’d realize that and advocate accordingly.

Even so, there isn’t a single elected official in the state advocating for allowing noncitizens to vote, even for something as utterly trivial as a television tax district. There is, however, one opinion columnist who thinks there should be.

David Colborne ran for public office twice. He is now an IT manager, the father of two sons, and a weekly opinion columnist for The Nevada Independent. You can follow him on Mastodon @[email protected], on Bluesky @davidcolborne.bsky.social, on Threads @davidcolbornenv or email him at [email protected].