LAS VEGAS — ACLU of Nevada Executive Director Athar Haseebullah released the following open letter following results from Election Day.
My Fellow Nevadans,
We waited a few days to let some of the dust settle on Election 2024. On election day, the ACLU of Nevada, in conjunction with our community partners, deployed the largest election observation force in the state’s history, with approximately 500 observers, including 75 attorneys, monitoring the election in all 17 of Nevada’s counties. We are grateful to so many for helping ensure a relatively smoothly run election (albeit obviously imperfect).
This election saw some wins for civil liberties and civil rights in Nevada, with the abolition of slavery within our Constitution, the first passage of constitutional protections for reproductive freedom statewide, and a number of civil rights-aligned candidates prevailing in their races. The election also saw Donald Trump win Nevada, win the national popular vote, and secure a second term as President of the United States.
While there are now an endless number of election post-mortems attempting to deduce why this election yielded the outcomes it did, the reality remains there are any number of reasons why voters voted or didn’t vote a specific way during this election. Americans are not a monolith, and neither are Nevadans. Reducing 150 million votes into simple data sets isn’t a precise science. Rather than engaging in conjecture, we want you to be sure of a few things as we head into a second Trump administration.
While ACLU of Nevada doesn’t endorse or oppose candidates or parties, we are clear-eyed that elections have a real impact on our civil liberties and civil rights. I anticipate President Trump’s second administration will be even more aggressive in attacking some of our civil liberties and civil rights than in his first term, including engaging in significant government overreach to target vulnerable populations and to undermine protections for rights the administration publicly purports to support, including key constitutional protections like the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth amendments. While I hope to be proven wrong, hope isn’t a strategy, and it’s important we take President Trump at his word, which requires that our response in protecting our civil liberties and civil rights is more vociferous than ever before. I also remain optimistic there may be some areas of mutual alignment that might exist. Where areas of collaboration exist, we will attempt to work together. Where areas of injustice exist, we will fight back. Our aim heading into January of 2025 remains the preservation of civil liberties and civil rights for all Nevadans, period.
No matter where you fall on the political spectrum, there remains a lot to be confident in if you’re a Nevadan who believes in civil liberties and civil rights. We live in one of the best states in the country when it comes to protecting individual and collective rights, but it's far from a perfect state, which makes the work that lies ahead of us critical. As an organization, we have won more legal battles against government entities in Nevada than any other organization during the last four years. We are also part of a network of ACLU affiliates that filed over 400 legal actions against the government after President Trump’s first administration engaged in infringements on civil liberties and civil rights. We have followed suit by bringing legal actions against the Biden administration when civil liberties and civil rights violations occurred.
We aren’t new to this, and we aren’t afraid. To any Nevadan who feels scared, though, rest assured, you are not alone. We are ready for the fights ahead. We have your back. We are with you.
In Service,
Athar Haseebullah, Esq.
Executive Director
ACLU of Nevada
