How many noncitizen voter registrations has Tarrant County rejected?

FORT WORTH – The Fort worth Star-Telegram says recent stories of noncitizens registering to vote in the upcoming general election might have led some to believe the activity is rampant in North Texas. But the number of voter registration applications rejected in Tarrant County because the person is not a U.S. citizen tells a different story. So far this year, Tarrant County has received and processed around 53,000 voter registrations, according to county spokesperson Bill Hanna. Of those, 18 have been rejected for not providing proof of citizenship, he said. That number represents 0.0003% of this year’s voter registration applications in Tarrant County. The idea that noncitizens were registering to vote en masse in North Texas flared up earlier this week after Fox News personality Maria Bartiromo posted on X Sunday that there was a “massive line of immigrants” registering to vote outside a driver license office in Weatherford.

“None of it is true,” a spokesperson for the Texas Department of Public Safety, which operates the office, told the Star-Telegram on Monday, adding that the idea that a line of nonwhite people waiting to get their IDs were unauthorized immigrants was “kind of racist.” Brady Gray, chair of the Republican party in Parker County, looked into Bartiromo’s story on Monday and found that “there has been no large submission of registrants consistent with the claim.” He told the Star-Telegram on Wednesday, however, that his findings should not be taken as representative of Texas counties writ large. Bartiromo doubled down on her friend’s wife’s account Thursday on her morning show on Fox, citing other parts of the DPS spokesperson’s statement to the Star-Telegram: that there was a voter registration booth outside a Lake Worth DPS office on Friday, but not at the other two sites mentioned. “I’m told speaker Mike Johnson will move to attach the SAVE Act, which requires proof of citizenship to vote, to a continuing resolution to fund government when Congress returns in September,” she said.