Texas has removed over one million ineligible voters from the state voter rolls so far since the enforcement of the historic Senate Bill 1 that Democrats dubbed as a GOP effort of voter suppression.
According to Texas Governor Greg Abbott, the process to clean the voter rolls is still ongoing as he added that keeping elections transparent is central to American democracy. He argued that he signed a strict voting bill into law to stop illegal voting that should never be allowed at any cost.
Included in the purged individuals are people who have migrated out of Texas, dead individuals, noncitizens, and others. The governor’s statement suggested that 1,930 of the total 6,500 noncitizens removed from the rolls have previously voted in the US elections.
Among the removed individuals include over 457,000 deceased people and 134,000 former Texans who no longer live in the state.
Meanwhile, more than 463,000 people were removed due to their presence on the suspense list, a list that includes people whose voter registration certificates are marked undelivered, and they remain under this category for two consecutive federal elections. The suspense list majorly contains people who have moved within the state and have not updated their address, which means that the state does not know about their current district. Similarly, almost 6,000 convicted felons have also been removed from the rolls.
The governor argued that the office of Texas Secretary of State and county voter registrar are bound to clear voter laws due to the legal requirement, and they have to forward illegal voter cases to the state Attorney General.
The governor’s announcement came less than ten weeks before the November 5 presidential elections, which some critics from the left believe is a deliberate attempt to undermine the trust in the election integrity.
These critics suggest that maintaining voter rolls is just a routine process that the government is obligated to perform under federal and state laws, but Abbott’s insistence on raising the issue in public may be driven by malicious intent.
After Abbott’s press release, voting rights groups wrote a fiery letter to the Texas Secretary of State, asking if the state is removing votes within 90 days of elections, as this would be counted as a violation of US federal law.
The voting rights groups also raised alarm bells about the definition of “non-citizens,” claiming that the governor might have mistakenly removed these people from the rolls. Some election observers requested more information from the state about the purging of non-citizen voters, claiming that the state has previously removed eligible votes under this tag.
In 2019, Texas removed nearly 95,000 “noncitizen” voters, most of whom were later found to be naturalized citizens. The controversy led to the resignation of David Whitley, who was serving as the Texas Secretary of State at the time.
