Texas removed 1 million from voter rolls, most had moved or died.

AUSTIN – The New York Times reports that days after officers acting on behalf of the Texas attorney general raided the homes of Democratic activists and a Latina candidate for the State House, Gov. Greg Abbott promoted his efforts to clear the voter rolls of those who did not belong there. Mr. Abbott, a Republican, said that more than 1.1 million voters had been purged from the list of eligible voters since September 2021, when he signed an election integrity bill into law that Texas Democrats had warned could prevent many eligible people from casting votes. Officials said the removals were part of the state’s routine maintenance of the voter rolls, ensuring that those who have died or are no longer living at their registered address are removed. But the timing of the announcement from the Republican governor on Monday raised concern among Democratic officials and voting rights advocates, who feared a coordinated effort by top Republican leaders to intimidate voters and tamp down on Democratic efforts to increase registrations ahead of the November vote.

“The message is we’re going to do everything we can to discourage voting in Texas,” said Mike Doyle, the chair of the Democratic Party in Harris County, which includes Houston. “Why else would you announce this as a big victory? This is supposed to be a routine accuracy check that has been going on forever.” Mr. Abbott’s announcement followed the raids last week by the office of the attorney general, Ken Paxton, of members of the League of United Latin American Citizens, one of the nation’s oldest Latino civil rights organizations, along with a variety of Democratic candidates and consultants.It was accompanied by Mr. Paxton’s announcement that he was looking into registration efforts by groups in urban areas across the state as potential violations of law. While the total number of voters removed cited by Mr. Abbott appeared large, it did not represent a significant change in what ordinarily occurs as part of the maintenance of voting rolls in Texas. In fact, a New York Times analysis of voter registration cancellation data in Texas since 2018 suggests that it was routine. Nearly 500,000 of the voters purged during the time period highlighted by Mr. Abbott were dead. About the same number were cleared after they were put on a list of people who did not vote in two successive general elections and are believed to have moved. Those numbers were roughly equivalent to the number of voters in those categories removed in previous years. There were 18 million registered voters in Texas as of March, up from 16 million in 2020.