President Trump on Monday threatened to sue to stop Nevada from delivering absentee ballots to all active voters, just hours after the Legislature voted to conduct the state's presidential election mainly by mail because of the coronavirus.
Solidly blue California and Vermont have made similar decisions this summer, joining five states that were going to be almost wholly vote-by-mail before the pandemic.
Nevada becomes the first somewhat purple place on the roster, however, and the president asserted without evidence the switch will make it impossible for him to carry its six electoral votes. It was the latest of at least six dozen statements he's made seeking to rattle confidence in the democratic process by asserting mailed ballots will magnify fraud and minimize GOP electoral strength.
"In an illegal late night coup, Nevada's clubhouse Governor made it impossible for Republicans to win the state," Trump declared on Twitter. "Post Office could never handle the Traffic of Mail-In Votes without preparation. Using Covid to steal the state. See you in Court!"
Gov. Steve Sisolak is planning to sign the measure, which his fellow Democrats in Carson City pushed through over the weekend on back-to-back party-line votes. Sunday's Senate vote clearing he bill was 13-8.
Trump offered no hint about his legal argument for blocking the impending law, and so far this year the federal courts — including a steady stream of rulings from the Supreme Court — have largely left it to the states to decide election regulations for themselves.
Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, the only Republican statewide elected official, told lawmakers Friday that she was not aware of any fraud in the June primary, the first time the state mailed all active voters absentee ballots.
Although just 2 percent of votes were cast in person, the main complaint was about lines as long as eight hours because only a handful of polling places were open in Las Vegas and Reno, where seven of eight Nevadans live. Just 19 were open statewide. The new legislation will mandate 140 polling stations on Nov. 3, almost as many as two years ago.
Cegavske nonetheless opposed the bill, which she said was written without her input, mainly because it has a provision broadly expanding permission for the collection and return of absentee envelopes by non-family members including political operatives. Republicans say this "ballot harvesting" can also incubate election theft. Voting rights groups say it helps turnout in poorer rural communities, especially on Native American reservations.
The bill provides $3 million to proactively distribute mail ballots. But Cegavske said that was not enough to cover the expense for equipment, education, printing and postage for delivering 1.6 million of them — and provided nothing to counties for opening and tabulating them.
That problem would be solved if the next economic recovery package from Congress includes more money to help states conduct their elections, but negotiations on the package are at an impasse.
Nevada got 1 percent of the $400 million in election grants Congress approved this spring and used that money mainly on the primary, though some equipment purchased for that election can be used again.
Just 9 percent of Nevada votes were cast by mail two years ago, so the president is on to something in suggesting the challenges — to get ready in three months for that number to multiply perhaps tenfold — are daunting.
Since the pandemic took hold and the county started looking to on rely mail ballots as never before, Trump has asserted that the system "doesn't work out well for Republicans." But his party's operatives have been embracing it for decades, and a recent study concluded it does not benefit one party over another.
And experts say there is no evidence of meaningful election fraud associated with mail-in voting.
Election officials and voting rights groups also universally contradict Trump's claim that there's a meaningful difference between absentee ballots, which he approves of and has used several times himself, and vote-by-mail ballots. The two are synonymous because they are processed the same way.
Monday's tweet comes a month after the Trump campaign sued to stop officials in battleground Pennsylvania from relaxing some of their vote-by-mail rules. The national GOP is fighting lawsuits over voting rules in at least 18 other states.
And last week he floated the idea of delaying the election – which he has no authority to do — as the best way to counter the rise of mail voting. The suggestion was met with unusually clear and quick rejection from Republicans.
Four years ago Hillary Clinton won Nevada by 3 points, or 27,000 votes — the third straight Democrat to do so as the state's Latino and suburban white-collar populations expand. But the Trump campaign had been talking of spending there this fall, along with just two other states that he lost narrowly but asserted he was in position to flip this time: Minnesota and New Hampshire.
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner speaks to voters at a town hall at the Elks Lodge 188 on June 7, 2026, in Portland, Maine.
McConnell and Platner both feel entitled
The two men could not be more different. One, a Republican, octogenarian, seven-term Southern senator, the other a progressive, millennial Maine oysterman who’s never spent a day in elected office.
But Mitch McConnell, the senior senator from Kentucky who’s been MIA for the past few weeks and Graham Platner, the Maine Senate candidate who’s facing calls to drop out of his race against Sen. Susan Collins, apparently do have something in common: an outsized sense of entitlement.
McConnell, who is 84 and not running for reelection, has been hospitalized for three weeks, and yet we still don’t fully know what he was admitted for or what his condition is. Per CNN, “his office has not disclosed a medical reason for the hospitalization or provided specifics on his health status beyond saying last week that he ‘continues to improve’ and ‘is working closely with his staff on Kentucky and Senate matters.’ ”
While several legislators have said they’ve talked to him and insist he sounds strong, others have said they are completely in the dark. One MAGA influencer, Laura Loomer, posted ”High level source close to the White House tells me ‘Mitch McConnell is officially brain dead. He’s not coming back.’ ”
Meanwhile, up in Maine, Platner has been artfully dodging calls from his own party to drop out of his race after several allegations of misconduct from women, including a sexual assault allegation from a former girlfriend, came to light. While Platner, who has managed to survive a Nazi-tattoo scandal, a sexting scandal, and several old tweets scandals, denies the allegations, he has not quit.
High-profile Democrats including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer, the latter of whom had unsuccessfully hand-selected Maine Gov. Janet Mills to face Collins instead of Platner, have urged Platner to drop out, while other Dems have accused him of trying to influence the picking of his replacement.
Maine Democratic Party Executive Director Devon Murphy-Anderson released a statement Tuesday, which said in part:
“Unfortunately, Graham Platner’s team has repeatedly reached out to us in an attempt to put their thumb on the scale of what this process looks like. We have repeatedly reiterated to Graham Platner’s team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate nor in determining what this process looks like.”
Both incidents show a deep lack of accountability to voters, who in one case deserve to know whether their senator is capable of performing his duties, and in another deserve a candidate who isn’t being accused of crimes, bigotry and deception.
The offensive and odious entitlement of both McConnell and Platner stands out not because it is particularly unique among today’s political class. Tom Kean, the New Jersey GOP congressman, missed more than 100 votes, only sharing after a three-month mystery absence that he was dealing with depression.
Former President Joe Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin failed to disclose a hospitalization for prostate cancer surgery, flouting the established rules for Cabinet members and senior U.S. officials.
From Biden’s insistence on running for reelection despite his obvious cognitive and political weaknesses to Trump’s brazen flouting of laws and norms, few politicians seem to appreciate that their public service job comes with responsibilities to constituents, including transparency and honesty.
But both parties increasingly justify the chicanery, because the stakes of winning elections and keeping power are simply too high. But that’s no excuse. If we’ve learned anything over the past decade, it’s that character and accountability do, in fact, matter. And when we, the voters, stop caring about it, well, so do they.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.