Election Day is Nov. 5.
As what many see as the most consequential presidential race ever heats up, so has the effort to ensure voter integrity.
On Aug. 26, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced that the Lone Star State has eliminated one million names from its state voter rolls.
The majority of those removed have moved out of state or have passed away.
Gov. Abbott said, “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.”
On social media, Abbott added that some of the removed names would go to state’s attorney general office for potential criminal prosecution.
During the 2020 presidential campaign, former President Donald Trump began to complain that the only way he would lose to President Joe Biden was if the Democrats cheated.
Despite little evidence of voting fraud, Trump claimed that the Democrats had stolen the election from him.
Many Republicans and conservative media personalities claimed that dead people had casted votes for President Biden, Republican votes had gotten switched to Democrats and that the voting machine companies were in on the “steal.”
Although the evidence did not support those claims, many Republican politicians have used the “Big Lie” to make it more difficult to vote.
Even before the 2020 election, Abbott had unsuccessfully attempted to purge 100,000 noncitizens from the rolls.
That purge attempt led to the resignation of a Texas Secretary of State and legal settlement with groups that advocated for voting rights.
The settlement required the setting of parameters for future voter purges.
Taylor Goldenstein of the Houston Chronicle’s Austin, Texas bureau reported, “Ashley Harris, attorney for the ACLU of Texas said the group has unresolved questions about the accuracy of the state’s latest data because the organization has not been allowed to review it.”
In 2021, many political leaders warned that the data the state used to purge voters consistently flagged people in error.
They said many of those flagged had become citizens through the naturalization process.
Harris said, “Gov. Abbott’s recent announcement about voter registration list maintenance lacks context, and instead points to routine voter list maintenance that does not provide evidence of wrongdoing by any voter. Any attempts to point to this data as evidence of criminal wrongdoing is part of a pattern of voter intimidation and suppression by the state of Texas and certain elected officials.”
Goldenstein of the Houston Chronicle reported, “There were nearly 18 million registered voters as of February, according to the secretary of state’s office.
“Senate Bill 1, the Republican-backed election law overhaul passed in 2021, requires that the secretary of state’s office conduct regular sweeps of the voter rolls. It also laid out new consequences for local voter registrars who fail to comply with voter roll maintenance requirements, such as mandated training or audits.”
Of the people removed since the 2021 law went into effect, over 6,000 have a felony conviction, over 457,000 have died, more than 463,000 may have changed addresses and did not respond to request for address confirmation.
Additionally, more than 124,000 confirmed that they have indeed moved addresses and more than 19,000 requested their voter registration got canceled.
The purge list includes 65,000 Texans who did not respond to request for them to attest to their eligibility to vote after investigations by the secretary of state determined that they may be ineligible to cast a ballot.
Over 6,500 received the title of “potential noncitizens” and were removed from the voter logs.
Of those 6,500, approximately 1,900 had cast votes in past elections, according to a statement released by Abbott.
However, Goldenstein reported, “Inclusion on that list does not prove a person is a noncitizen, as the list includes people who failed to respond to a request from the secretary of state’s office for them to submit proof of citizenship within 30 days. Those who have recently moved may have not seen the notices.”
Thomas Saenz, who serves as president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said that Republicans should not celebrate those numbers as if they are big wins for the GOP.
Saenz labeled the number of purged “noncitizens” as “miniscule in context” with the number of total registered voters.
Furthermore, he said that many on the purged list for not being citizens have become naturalized citizens of the United States.
He said, “The reason he (Abbott) and others are trying to undermine confidence in our election system is to give a reason to suppress legitimate votes through draconian legislation. And to, in advance, call into question an election outcome they don’t like. That’s what we saw in 2020.”
Many leaders from the Latino community have ridiculed state leaders for raiding the homes of community activists who they believe participated in election fraud.
Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa said, “Using secret police-like tactics to raid the homes of the elderly and Democratic strategists, while ignoring their own Secretary of State’s claims of ‘clean voter rolls,’ Texas Republicans will stop at nothing to undermine our democracy. We won’t be intimidated—Texans are ready to stand up for their rights and make their voices heard at the ballot box this November.”
On Aug. 29, Texas state Reps. Gene Wu, Jon Rosenthal and Christina Morales hosted a press conference on voter registration suspensions in Texas.
The politicians addressed why registrations are in suspense, how community members can verify their voter registration status and what affected citizens should do if they have discovered that they are on the suspension list.
