There is no question in my mind that mail-in voting is going to lead to increased voter turnout: Nevada AG

Aaron Ford, Nevada's Attorney General, joined Yahoo Finance's Kristin Myers, Sibile Marcellus, and Jen Rogers to discuss the Trump campaign suing Nevada over its mail-in voting plan and how he is addressing police brutality in the state.

Video Transcript

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KRISTIN MYERS: Welcome to Yahoo Finance. I'm Kristin Myers. And this is 2020-- A Time For Change. Well, the elections are now less than three months away. And as the coronavirus pandemic continues, states are rushing to provide voters with the option to mail in their votes.

And in Nevada just earlier this week, Governor Steve Sisolak signed a new law, AB4-- Assembly Bill 4-- that would automatically send a ballot to all registered Nevada voters. Now the president lampooned that move, tweeting, quote, "in an illegal late night coup, Nevada's clubhouse Governor made it impossible for Republicans to win the state. Post Office could never handle the traffic of mail-in votes without preparation. Using COVID to steal the state. See you in court."

So we're going to be starting today's conversation there with the Attorney General of Nevada, Aaron Ford. And, as always, I'm joined today by Sibile Marcellus and Jen Rogers. Attorney General, thank you so much for joining us today. I want to start with the president and that lawsuit that he actually filed on Tuesday-- so just one day after the governor signed that bill. We have a chart now that shows how the percentage of absentee voting and mail-in voting has only been increasing throughout the years. As you know, I'm sure, received this vote-- or received this lawsuit-- excuse me-- in the state, are you thinking that this is just purely politically motivated-- that the president is attempting to suppress the vote in Nevada?

AARON FORD: Well, first off, Kristin, let me say thank you so much for including me. I really appreciate the opportunity to have a conversation. I am Attorney General in Nevada-- I am Nevada's Attorney General. And, yeah. As soon as I saw his Tweet come out, frankly, the first thing I wanted to do was to respond and say, hey, that's my line. See you in court. I've met Mr. Trump's administration in court on several occasions. And we have an 80 some-odd percent success rate in suing this administration.

So I'm not quite concerned, frankly, on neither threat, nor the actuality of this lawsuit. So first, let me say that Nevada has many safeguards in place to ensure the integrity of an all-mail election. And when President Trump made his comments about Nevada and mail-in ballots, I found them both alarming and, as you might imagine, perplexing. The Constitution gives us the power in our own state to determine the time and place for elections with certain exceptions over certain prescriptions in the Constitution.

And so looking at this in the context of COVID, where we also have the responsibility of protecting the wealth-- the health and well-being of our citizenry in our voting population. I found it, again, perplexing that he would want us to refrain from balancing these interests. We're going to proceed with our voting as planned. And we are in court now. And we will see how this results.

KRISTIN MYERS: So I was really curious because I was reading some details about the lawsuit. You obviously are a lawyer. I am not. But I was interested about, particularly, the attack or the complaint rather, on one of the provisions essentially that required-- this bill now requires Nevada's two most populous counties-- Clark County being one of them-- to have a higher minimum number of polling places than the less populous counties.

In that complaint from the lawsuit, they said essentially that rural areas were not giving as much access to polling places. Which struck me as interesting, particularly, as, you know, the Voting Rights Act of 2013 now struck down. And we've seen a lot of polling places closed. And we've seen a lot of voters of color-- Black voters-- being disproportionately impacted-- their vote being suppressed. Is there at all-- let's just say this lawsuit did go forward. And they did actually win in their lawsuit. If they are claiming that they want an equal right to the vote, is there some sort of upside here that this could somehow increase voter enfranchisement?

AARON FORD: Well, let me be clear. I can't talk about the litigation and the current tactics and strategies that we're going to engage and employ in those. I can speak generally, though, on this issue. Before I was the attorney general, I was the senate majority leader. And before that, I was the senate minority leader.

And when I was the minority leader, there was an effort by the majority party at that time-- the Republicans-- to undermine and disenfranchise some voters. I stood steadfast against it. One of the things they wanted to do was to make every county have the same number of early voting locations, for example. Which was an overt effort, in my estimation, to disenfranchise folks in the larger counties. There is no question in my mind that a mail-in voting is going to lead to increased voter turnout.

And therein lies the quandary for this president because he knows that the more people that vote, the less likely it is he's going to remain president. So, you know, that's a long answer to your question. But the bottom line is, you know, again, we are confident and secure in our system as set up. We want to engage as many eligible voters as possible and provide them opportunities to exercise their franchise, either in person-- because they can still do that, let's be clear-- or by mail-in ballot if they're concerned about COVID.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: And you said there, that the reason why President Trump doesn't want mail-in voting is because he doesn't want a large voter turnout. Well what about the issue of fraud? Is that of concern at all for you when it comes to mail-in voting?

AARON FORD: It is not for me. But beyond-- the more important person on this particular conversation is the Secretary of State, Barbara Cegavske-- in our state-- who is a Republican-- who ran a primary that was 90% by mail, and has said, unequivocally, several times, that there is no indication of voter fraud in the mail-in voting context.

JEN ROGERS: Just to take a step back and talk about the state overall-- Nevada has made a lot of strides since the Great Recession. And really, you know, basically recovered in many senses. However, we talk on this show about income inequality all of the time. And Nevada has the worst unemployment rate right now in the country. We have a big jobs report coming out tomorrow. Do you feel that inequality issues that have been in the state before, even though ground may have been made up in the last couple of years, that that has been fully lost and that a year's worth of work are yet to be done now that it's been erased?

AARON FORD: Well first of all, let me acknowledge I'm not an economist. And I can't speak to this with precision. But what I can do is speak anecdotally to what I'm saying out there, which is absolutely unemployment is an issue. And we are gravely concerned about the disproportionate impact that it's going to have on the Nevadans as a state and predominantly those within our state who have historically been those who had a hard time making ends meet.

I want to give you all a bit of advice, though. When you come to our state, unless you want to get the up charge, you got to pronounce it right. It's not "Na-va-da" y'all, it's "Ne-va-da."

JEN ROGERS: And I would never-- I always get it wrong.

AARON FORD: I guarantee you, you come and talk about Nevada, we're going to up-charge you, so--

JEN ROGERS: You're not an economist. And Kristin's not an attorney.

[LAUGHTER]

Here's another question.

KRISTIN MYERS: Attorney General, I have one more for you. I want to talk about the Black Lives Matter protest movement inside this state. Recently I saw the news that a Nevada library wanted to support Black Lives Matter. And I was told, actually, by the local Sheriff not to bother calling 9-1-1. I saw some of your comments in the aftermath of that.

But I'm wondering, for you, how do you see law enforcement, the criminal justice system, moving forward, working with the community in a way that is progressive and fair for everyone, especially in the aftermath of these protests and these increased calls for more racial equity and fairness, particularly, when it comes to the criminal justice system.

AARON FORD: Well, first off, let me say this. I think there are at least three types of communities out there. And I talked about this on day two on the job here. I was inaugurated January 7, 2019. And I can say the first day I got to work, we were kind of having fun. Right?

But on day two, I had a all hands on deck meeting where I explain to everyone who worked here that I would have a focus on community relations and ensuring that the communities that interact with us trust us. The communities that I'm familiar with are the ones you see, for example, on "Law and Order." Where if it's a police officer on the stand, whatever that officer says is Bible. And the jury believes that person and that's that. They have the utmost trust in government. And that's one type of community.

There's a second community that had the highest level of trust out there, but it's diminished for some reason. Maybe it's because of vicariously seeing someone be being exposed to bad treatment. Or maybe it's a personal experience that they had. But they still have some level of trust in the law enforcement.

Then you've got the community, frankly, where I came from that had little to no trust in government. To be sure we wanted them to come to our communities when bad things happen, but sometimes bad things happen when they came to our communities. And so in my estimation, my job as the top law enforcement officer in the state, is to augment trust where it already exists, it's to restore it where it's been diminished, and it's to create it where it's never existed at all. So these notions, right now, in the conversations we're having in the aftermath of George Floyd's killing, I think, are apropos relative to those types of communities.

And I do believe, frankly, that the comments of the sheriff-- and I've made this known to him, as well as the library board-- were inappropriate. And I think they were wrongheaded. And I think that it was-- I made that known. To say you support Black Lives Matter, does not say that you think all police are racists. It doesn't think that-- it doesn't say that you support violence in neighborhoods. In fact, it's just the opposite. You are trying to cut down on violence, particularly in the Black community at the hands of law enforcement.

And so these conversations are important. And I think that we have opportunities to, again, to augment, to restore, and to create trust through these conversations. But beyond conversations, through legislations that has been passed and enacted and also enforced.

KRISTIN MYERS: All right, we'll have to leave that there. Nevada Attorney General, Aaron Ford. Thank you so much for joining us today.

AARON FORD: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.