Texas Removes Over A Million Ineligible Voters From Voter Roles, Nearly 2,000 Are Noncitizens With Voting History

On Monday, Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) announced that over one million ineligible voters, some of whom were noncitizens, were removed from the state's voter rolls after the governor signed Senate Bill 1 into law in 2021. The announcement comes as Republican officials nationwide take action to prevent noncitizens from voting in the upcoming November election and ensure that the American people can have faith in the integrity of the electoral process.

From the over 1.1 million registrations that the secretary of state's office removed, 6,500 were noncitizens, over 457,000 were deceased individuals, over 463,000 were voters on the suspense list, over 134,000 voters who had responded to an address confirmation notice, over 65,000 who failed to respond to an address notice, and over 19,000 who requested that their voter registration be canceled. 

“Election integrity is essential to our democracy. I have signed the strongest election laws in the nation to protect the right to vote and to crack down on illegal voting," Gov. Abbott said in a statement. "These reforms have led to the removal of over one million ineligible people from our voter rolls in the last three years, including noncitizens, deceased voters, and people who moved to another state. The Secretary of State and county voter registrars have an ongoing legal requirement to review the voter rolls, remove ineligible voters, and refer any potential illegal voting to the Attorney General’s Office and local authorities for investigation and prosecution. Illegal voting in Texas will never be tolerated. We will continue to actively safeguard Texans’ sacred right to vote while also aggressively protecting our elections from illegal voting.”

Of the 6,500 noncitizens removed from the voter rolls, 1,930 had a voting history. These individual cases were sent to Attorney General Ken Paxton's (R-TX) office for further investigation and potential charges. Gov. Abbott signed House Bill 1243 into law last year to increase the penalty for noncitizens who voted in elections, classifying the crime as a second-degree felony.

While the governor and secretary of state of Texas are working to ensure registered voters are American citizens with accurate records, Ken Paxton is taking action to prevent nonprofit organizations from registering noncitizens in the Lone Star State. As previously reported by the DC Enquirer, Paxton's office noted that various investigations have confirmed that nonprofit organizations have been located outside of Texas Department of Public Safety Driver License offices offering to register voters even though American citizens can register when they renew their identifying documents. Given that, these nonprofit organizations are a redundancy that, Paxton claims, calls "into question the motives of the nonprofit groups."

Given that voter registration only requires those registering to attest to their citizenship rather than providing documentary evidence, Republicans have been seeking out ways to alleviate that security gap. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) pushed through the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act through the lower chamber earlier this year, but it has yet to be taken up by the Democrat-controlled Senate. Given the unwillingness of lawmakers in Washington, D.C., to protect the upcoming election from illegal voting, state officials are stepping up instead.

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