In response to COVID’s widespread disruptions, Nevada Democrats recently passed Assembly Bill 4, making substantial changes to Nevada election law for the 2020 election. That did not sit well with the first U.S. president to ever suggest delaying his own election. He accused Democrats of an “illegal late night coup” meant to “steal” Nevada and make it “impossible” for him and other Republicans to ever win. He promised “immediate litigation” and made good on his threat Tuesday. This, on top of his earlier threat to withhold Nevada’s federal funds if we modified our elections to his personal disliking. 

I don’t begrudge any Nevada Republican legislators for opposing the bill. In large part, they followed the sound lead of Republican Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, who along with her staff and many other Nevada election officials, have proven to be reasonable, competent voices in abnormal times. In the heat of a special session sometimes the loyal opposition has to oppose. I get that. I also understand why local Republican candidates are upset. It is incredibly difficult and taxing to run for office. No one wants the rules changed in the middle of the contest. 

Local, measured opposition is fine, but I have no patience with President Trump’s continued efforts to discredit Nevada, especially in the context of his unprecedented assault on America’s democratic norms. In addition to floating the idea of a delayed election, he has now raised the specter of using an executive order to ban states from mail voting. No sitting president has ever waged such an open, brazen attack on our electoral system, and he has no problem adding Nevada to the list of collateral casualties in his war against voters.  

Nevada has stood up to federal bullies before, and we can run our own elections just fine. 

COVID has put us in a tenuous place. No one knows how the pandemic could distort the election. Conventional political wisdom is that high voter turnout benefits Democrats, and low turnout Republicans. If there was even a slight chance that COVID could depress turnout, Democrats would be derelict if they failed to respond.  

The bill’s reforms are mostly fine, and are, at least, rationally related to real and immediate problems. It is not necessarily the bill I would write, and I would have preferred bipartisan compromise, if possible. I also do not love letting private, third parties handle ballots. But, overall, the modifications represent a largely fair and reasoned attempt to make sure COVID does not impede the election.   

Honestly, Democrats showed an admirable level of self-restraint, mainly piggybacking on what Nevada did for the successful 2020 primary. Democrats could have done so much more. They could have mandated an “all mail” election, shutting down all other options. Unlike the 2020 primary, there will be close to as many in-person voting sites as 2018 in order to reduce the crowds at any one location, and prevent long lines and wait times. Anyone who wants to vote in person still can. Democrats could have also insisted, as they did in their earlier lawsuit, on mailing ballots to all registered voters and not just active registered voters. They could have stripped election officials of the ability to toss signatures entirely. More importantly, Democrats could have also made the changes permanent, not emergency tools for emergency occasions. 

As for process, nobody skirted any rules, even if the policy choices are not to everyone’s taste. Like it or not, Democrats passed the election reforms in a lawfully called special legislative session.  Sure, the bill became law in a hurry and in a manner that invited sincere skepticism; but all special sessions run in haste, and there was real reason for urgency: why change election rules if there is no time to implement them? Democrats are legitimately concerned about COVID suppressing the vote, and their legislative efforts mirrored their fears. They went as far as they believed necessary to keep the 2020 election safe and open — no further. 

Sadly, President Trump has not singled out Nevada for special disgust; he is sowing doubt about our country’s entire electoral system. He appears determined to win by any means necessary. And if he can’t win, he wants to burn everything down on the way out. 

How the Republican Party went from Lincoln to Trump is a topic worthy of far more attention than one or many editorials. But the president’s current fight against voting rights turns the party’s proud history on its head. For most of its existence, the Republican Party was a voter’s best friend; sometimes his or her only friend. Consider just the following list of accomplishments:

1. From 1862-1864 Republicans made radical changes to allow Union soldiers to vote by creating the first widespread absentee voting process in history. 
2. Republicans passed the Fourteenth Amendment, which, among other things, added the words “right to vote” to the U.S. Constitution for the very first time.
3. Republicans passed the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870 giving African-American males the right to vote and making the United States the first bi-racial democracy in the world. 
4. In 1919, after years of Republican support, new Republican majorities (led by future conservative Supreme Court Justice George Southerland) in the House and Senate finally approved the Nineteenth Amendment, which extended the voting franchise to women. 
5. Republicans also largely supported all of the other pro-voting amendments to the Constitution:
   1. Seventeenth: providing for the direct election of U.S. senators.
   2. Twenty-Third: giving Washington, D.C. electoral votes.
   3. Twenty-Fourth: ending poll taxes. 
   4. Twenty-Sixth: lowering the voting age to 18. 
6. A higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats in Congress voted for the federal Voting Rights Act of 1865. And Republican Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush extended it. The last congressional extension of the Act came in 2006 when Republicans controlled both the White House and Congress. 
7. President Reagan signed the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act in 1986.
8. A Republican House, a Democratic Senate, and President George W. Bush passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002. 

It is hard to imagine President Trump supporting any of the above, post-1920 accomplishments. What changed? Armchair political insight says that the two major parties “switched sides” with the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. After that, Republicans supposedly embarked on a “southern strategy” that gobbled up all the former Democratic southern racists. This claim has little real historical support, and it ignores trends in play long before and after 1964. For instance, President Franklin Roosevelt was not a modern-day Republican, and many of the New Deal’s most ardent Democratic supporters were also some of the worst racists ever elected to public office. Modern Democrats would love for Republicans to bear the sins of past Democrats. 

Such an ahistorical view also downplays the agency of minority voters, as if all they knew how to do was reflexively bounce from one “white savior” to the next. Political coalitions in a two-party system are strange, fluid things, inapt for simplistic reductionism. 

Still, there can be no doubt that on the issue of voting rights, President Trump looks and sounds more like the Republican Party’s early opponents than its founders.  

Nevertheless, there is no need to dig through history to understand the contemporary Republican shift on voting issues. The country has changed, and Republican policies struggle to command majority support from the current electorate. Indeed, Republicans have won the presidential popular vote just one time since 1988. 

Rather than face the harsh truths and hard choices demanded by the marketplace of ideas, however, Republicans like Trump want a short cut, pushing on voting rights to push back on voting realities. That is an immoral, short-term play with a sad historical pedigree. And the long-term reckoning may be far worse than any momentary political pain. You cannot distort or suppress majority will forever. At some point, Republicans will have to meet the needs of the voting market or decay into irrelevance. Our country will be far poorer without a credible, center-right party in play.

No, President Trump, there was no “coup” in Nevada. Just democracy. Normal people on both sides fighting for what they believe in. Ultimately, more Nevada voters may vote because of Assembly Bill 4. That is good for Nevada, even if it is bad for President Trump. 

Daniel H. Stewart is a fifth-generation Nevadan and a partner with Hutchison & Steffen. He was Gov. Brian Sandoval’s general counsel and has represented various GOP elected officials and groups. He recently switched his registration to nonpartisan.