Gov. Abbott decries voter fraud, activists question the data

HOUSTON – The Houston Chronicle reports that Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday announced that the state has removed over 1 million names from the Texas voter rolls, mainly people who moved out of state or died but including 6,500 who Abbott described as potential noncitizens. “Illegal voting in Texas will never be tolerated,” Abbott said in a statement. “We will continue to actively safeguard Texans’ sacred right to vote while also aggressively protecting our elections from illegal voting.” Abbott added in a social media post that the removed names are being passed on to the attorney general’s office for possible criminal charges. The governor’s announcement came five years after a botched attempt in 2019 to purge up to 100,000 suspected noncitizen voters led to the resignation of a Texas Secretary of State and a settlement with voting rights organizations setting parameters for future cleanups.

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. Several local election officials in 2021 had warned that the state’s data continued to wrongly flag people who became citizens through naturalization. “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,” Harris said. “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.” 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.