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Texas has removed 1.1 million names from its voting rolls since the 2020 presidential election, after officials found these individuals to be ineligible. This news was shared by Governor Greg Abbott on Monday.
Abbott signed an election integrity bill, SB 1, into law in 2021. This law requires the secretary of state to collaborate with the Department of Public Safety to compare citizenship information in their database with voter rolls. These checks are conducted on a monthly basis.
“Election integrity is essential to our democracy,” Abbott stated. “I have signed the strongest election laws in the nation to protect the right to vote and to crack down on illegal voting.”
“These reforms have led to the removal of over one million ineligible people from our voter rolls in the last three years, including noncitizens, deceased voters, and people who moved to another state,” he continued.
Voting booths are seen at Glass Elementary School’s polling station in Eagle Pass, Texas. (Mark Felix/AFP via Getty Images/File)
The Texas government has referred cases of ineligible voters who participated in elections to Attorney General Ken Paxton for prosecution.
“The Secretary of State and county voter registrars have a legal requirement to review the voter rolls, remove ineligible voters, and refer any potential illegal voting to the Attorney General’s Office and local authorities for investigation and prosecution,” Abbott emphasized.
Additionally, Abbott stated, “Illegal voting in Texas will never be tolerated. We will continue to actively safeguard Texans’ sacred right to vote while also aggressively protecting our elections from illegal voting.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (Brandon Bell/Getty Images/File)
Abbott’s office provided a chart that categorizes the reasons for the removal of names from the voting rolls and offers estimates for each category.
The largest group disqualified in this audit was “voters on the suspense list” – individuals who failed to confirm their residential address correctly. This category included more than 463,000 people.
The second-largest category was “deceased people” still listed on the voter rolls, numbering over 457,000.
The governor’s office also noted that approximately 6,500 noncitizens were removed from the rolls. Out of these, it is alleged that nearly 2,000 had cast votes in previous elections.
