Texas removes over 1M ineligible voters from voter rolls

AUSTIN, Texas - Governor Abbott announced the removal of more than one million voters from voter rolls in the state of Texas. The governor says the ongoing purge is to protect the integrity of the election and crackdown on illegal voting.

In 2021, Governor Abbott signed SB 1 into law to create statewide voting hours, maintain and expand voting access for registered voters needing assistance, prohibit drive-through voting, and authorize poll watchers to observe more aspects of the election process.

It also banned distribution of unsolicited mail-in ballot applications and ballots and requires IDs for mail-in ballots.

"Texas constantly goes about the process of reviewing voter rolls to remove people who are not eligible to vote, and this account happens to be from the year of 2021, so the size of more than a million people being removed is a pretty large amount," says Governor Abbott.

"We have seen a host of changes to the election code after the last several years that make voting more cumbersome as a process, but also make it more uncertain to figure out if they are eligible to vote or to determine what the criminal consequences are," says ACLU of Texas staff attorney Ashley Harris.

The same year, Governor Abbott also signed Senate Bill 1113, and House Bill 574 into law. Senate Bill 1113 allows the Secretary of State to withhold funds from counties that fail to remove non-citizens from their voter rolls.

House Bill 574 made it a second-degree felony to knowingly count invalid votes or refuse to count valid votes.

"Before the new laws I signed in September 2021, we were reviewing non-citizens through jury pools and through other strategies. The laws that I signed in 2021 enhanced our ability of reviewing non-citizens who may be able to vote. With that new tool, we were able to identify even more," says Governor Abbott.

More than 1.1 million voters have been purged from the voter rolls. About 6,500 of those were non-citizens.

"That obviously is a number higher than what we want to see, we want to see zero. I don’t care what your color is — black, white, brown, asian — I think everybody wants to see fair elections with the rules followed with no illegal voting," said Abbott.

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The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas staff attorney, Ashley Harris, says the data provided by the state is flawed.

"What this data tells us is that the state, one, flagged someone as a potential citizen and then wasn't able to confirm their citizenship. We have seen in a broader context that Texas has a long history of incorrectly flagging people as potential non-citizens both in 2019 and subsequently in 2021 on which this data is largely based," says Harris.

Governor Abbott says the numbers are accurate. 

"It requires the Texas Department of Transportation to do a matching to match people who may apply for a driver's license or any other type of card to identify those who are non-citizens," says Governor Abbott.

"We are encouraging people to check their voter registration status and make sure that it is up-to-date, which they can do online through their county and to register to vote by the deadline on October 7," says Harris.

In 2017, the governor signed SB 5, increasing the penalty for election workers who allow non-citizens and ineligible people to vote.