Trump's assault on rural NV voters.

Happy Saturday. "Our two reddest counties, Douglas and Nye County, are the highest adopters of mail ballots," Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar observed during an interview with NPR this week.

It’s not the first time Aguilar has noted the propensity of rural voters to cast mail ballots. Here's an excerpt from a Nevada Current story published at the end of June.

“Rural voters, military and overseas voters and working voters of every political party rely on mail ballots to make their voices heard in a way that works for them,” said Aguilar in a statement. “In the June Primary election, 60% of voters used mail ballots – with our most rural counties using them at the highest rates.”

In Douglas County, 3 out of 4 people–77%–used a mail ballot for this year’s primary election. Statewide, nearly 86% of voters have used a mail ballot at least once since 2022.

Meanwhile, you may have forgotten (it had slipped my mind) that the person Trump at least partially credited for the revival of his assault on mail ballots was his good buddy Putin.

Here's an excerpt from a column I wrote almost exactly a year ago, shortly after Trump's farce of a "summit" with Putin in Alaska.

Trump confided to one of his publicists at Fox News last week that while Trump was lovingly getting lost in Putin’s soulless, murdering eyes in Alaska, Putin, according to Trump, told Trump the 2020 election was “rigged because you have mail-in voting.”

Putin, Trump continued, told him “no country has mail-in voting. It’s impossible to have mail-in voting and have honest elections.”

“And he said that to me,” Trump humblebragged, so proud that Putin has once again taken him under his wing. “And it was very interesting, because we talked about 2020, and he said ‘you won that election by so much.’” 

For the record, that column also noted Putin and/or Trump were either uninformed or — gasp! — lying: A dozen countries let all voters cast their ballot through the mail, and another 22 have varied degrees of mail voting.

Of course, Trump didn't need Putin to whip up Trump's hostility to voting by mail (famously Trump's preferred personal method of voting). Trump has a default position on anything that might promote or facilitate participation in free and fair elections: he's against it.

But those Nevada voting stats cited by Aguilar suggest if the U.S. Supreme-often-Supine Court upholds Trump’s unconstitutional demand that the Trump regime will determine who should and should not receive mail ballots, in addition to the needless mayhem it would inflict on the election (and election workers who are just trying to do their jobs), it could also end up suppressing the vote among a key Republican constituency, rural voters.

The fate of some Nevada Republicans — third congressional district candidate David Flippo, Gov. Joe Lombardo, and Aguilar's opponent Jim Marchant, for example — hinge pretty heavily on rural voters.

Yes, corruptly hand-picking the electorate seems like something the Trump administration would be better at than, oh, the economy, or making war in the Middle East.

But whether the war is on global trade, or Iran, Trump and his people have demonstrated they sure are a sloppy, messy lot.

Trump has also launched a war on mail ballots.

A Trump war of choice blowing up in his face?

Imagine that.

***

Here's some of the news and commentary we published in the Nevada Current this week we wouldn't want you to miss:

April — There will be no new statewide ballot questions this year. But not for a lack of trying.

Dana —Wave of anti-money laundering sanctions has Strip’s attention, says Venetian’s attorney

Jen — Nevada sues feds over Colorado River cuts

Michael — Nevada could get up to $256 million from Meta settlement over youth social media addiction

Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos column — Nevada officials face reckoning as residents and tourists compete for lodging, cell service, roads

Good luck