A little more than 5% of the Texas State electoral roll has been erased. Governor Greg Abbott announced this week that since he signed a new package of laws aimed at restricting voting in 2021, more than a million names have been removed from the list of potential voters, including people who moved out of state, who have died, or whose current whereabouts cannot be confirmed, among others. The process, which some critics claim disproportionately affects Latinos and African Americans, is part of the crusade against an alleged “illegal vote” of which Republicans accuse without evidence immigrants without citizenship, with or without legal residence, and Democrats in general. “Illegal voting will never be tolerated in Texas. We will continue to actively safeguard the sacred right of Texans to vote and, at the same time, vigorously protect our elections from illegal voting,” Abbott said in the statement announcing the measure.
Several election experts in Texas and nationwide have spoken out, pointing out that voter registration rolls have been required since the passage of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. But they also warn that presenting this routine process as a protection against an unconfirmed “illegal vote” undermines confidence in the electoral process — already fragile due to GOP leader Donald Trump’s persistent denial of the 2020 results.
According to data released by the Texas government, of the slightly more than one million voters removed, 457,000 are deceased, 463,000 were on the suspended list—people who have not voted for two consecutive election cycles—134,000 had moved out of state, 65,000 did not respond to official follow-up communications, 19,000 requested to cancel their voter registration, and 6,000 were incarcerated. Only 6,500 of the names on the list are non-citizens, and of those, 1,930 had a “voting history”—that’s 0.036 and 0.01 percent of the state’s registered electorate, respectively—hardly a number that can decide any election. Even so, their records will be sent to the local Prosecutor’s Office for investigation and possible legal action against a crime considered serious in the State since the implementation of the new laws of 2021, even though the “voting history” may correspond to local elections, some of which do grant the right to vote to non-citizens.
Independent election observers have said they want more information about voters who have been removed from the rolls by Texas, however, as there are recent precedents for errors. For example, a naturalized citizen may be removed from the rolls because his or her documents in the database are out of date. The active pursuit of irregular voters and voter registration has been ongoing in Texas since Trump began baselessly repeating widespread voter fraud after the 2016 election, despite winning the election. In 2019, state officials singled out 95,000 voters they identified as “non-citizens” and accused them of voter fraud. After a review, it turned out that many of those people were naturalized. The scandal forced the secretary of state to resign and, after numerous lawsuits, led to the drafting of new rules for maintaining the rolls.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has said that the 2019 experience should mean greater transparency from Texas, but the data provided this week lacks context. And while it hints, in line with the message of the Republican Party and related media nationwide, at voting by immigrants without citizenship, it does not provide any example of a case where this has happened. In fact, there is virtually no evidence of this in any instance, and election observers agree that it is highly unlikely that an immigrant would risk possible deportation for a single vote.
Abbott’s announcement comes amid recent activity by state prosecutors against Latino pro-voting organizations and other political organizers as part of an investigation into voter fraud. House searches of Democratic supporters and activists from Lulac, one of the oldest Hispanic organizations in the United States, prompted the organization to accuse Attorney General Ken Paxton of criminalizing Hispanic voting and appeal to the federal government. In response to these moves in Texas and other red states, voting rights advocates are stepping up their training to counter intimidation by prosecutors in the run-up to the election.
According to Paxton, volunteers from nonprofits like Lulac help register voters outside DMV offices where driver’s licenses are processed. “If legally eligible citizens can legally register to vote inside these state offices, why are they being offered a second chance at a booth outside?” the attorney general asked. Paxton claims that the Biden-Harris administration has “intentionally flooded” the country with foreigners and that, without oversight, they “could illegally influence the election.” There is no evidence to support these claims.
The emphasis on voter fraud has its roots in Reconstruction-era efforts after the Civil War to suppress the votes of newly freed enslaved people and was revived after passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. But former President Donald J. Trump’s promotion of the false theory in recent years has given it new notoriety. Since then, Texas and several other states have moved to establish “election integrity” units, purge voters from their rolls and pass laws restricting how and when people can vote. Alarm bells are ringing and confidence in elections is weakening, but widespread fraud remains elusive.
