Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced Monday that the state has removed more than 1.1 million ineligible voters from the state's voter rolls, part of a crackdown on election integrity that began with the signing of Senate Bill 1 of 2021.
Senate Bill 1 was the primary reason dozens of Democrats left the state in the summer of 2021 due to a lack of a quorum. Democrats fled to Washington, DC for six weeks to delay the bill's consideration, until Governor Abbott eventually signed it into law.
“Election integrity is essential to our democracy,” Abbott said in a press release. “I signed the toughest elections bill in the nation to protect the right to vote and crack down on voter fraud. These reforms have resulted in more than one million ineligible voters being removed from voter rolls over the past three years, including foreign nationals, deceased voters and people who have emigrated to other states.”
Abbott continued, “The Secretary of State and county registrars of voters have an ongoing legal obligation to review voter rolls, remove ineligible voters, and refer potential illegal voters to the Attorney General's office and local authorities for investigation and prosecution. Illegal voting in Texas will never be tolerated, and we will continue to aggressively defend Texans' sacred right to vote and vigorously protect our elections from illegal votes.”
Among those removed from the voter rolls were more than 457,000 deceased people, more than 463,000 people on Texas' “withholding” list (voters whose addresses the state cannot verify), more than 6,000 felons, and more than 6,500 foreign nationals.
Despite these findings, state Democrats have called the idea of ineligible voters voting in state elections a “scare tactic.”
“There are false claims that illegal aliens are registering to vote and that the election system is rigged, but that's not true,” Democrat Eddie Morales said. “We don't expect any issues in the November election. We have a good system of checks and balances.”
Republicans, meanwhile, want people to have more confidence in the voting system.
“What we want is for voters to say, 'This is fair, this is transparent, and my vote matters.' As a state, we need to be the highest standard in the country, and the country needs to be the highest standard in the world,” Republican Mano de Ayala said.
The announcement comes as Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is investigating groups that may be helping illegal immigrants vote in the state.
“My office investigates all credible reports of potential criminal activity that could undermine the integrity of our elections. The Biden-Harris Administration is intentionally allowing illegal immigrants into our country, and without proper safeguards, foreign nationals could illegally influence our elections at the local, state and national levels,” Paxton said.
Governor Abbott signed several new election measures following the highly contentious 2020 general election. Senate Bill 1113 allows the Secretary of State to withhold funds from counties that fail to remove foreign nationals from their voter rolls. House Bill 574 makes it a second-degree felony to knowingly count invalid votes or fail to count valid votes in the state.
