AUSTIN, Texas — The Texas attorney general and secretary of state continue their efforts to clean up Texas’s voter rolls. Last week, they asked the federal immigration agency to verify the status of voters' citizenship.
But the ACLU of Texas and several other advocacy groups worry this push may prevent eligible voters from casting their ballots.
“The attorney general’s pattern of launching investigations that are unfounded stoke fear for people in immigrant communities that are naturalized citizens, and also for other voters of color,” said Ashley Harris, a staff attorney for the ACLU of Texas.
AG Paxton’s request to the secretary of state
Last week, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sent a letter to Secretary of State Jane Nelson, urging her to get federal immigration authorities involved in verifying the citizenship status of about 1 million voters. He even provided a draft letter to send to the U.S. immigration service.
Below is an excerpt from his letter:
“As the 2024 election nears, no issue is more important than election integrity. As Secretary of State, you stand on the front lines of the battle to protect the sanctity of the ballot box.”
Nelson then sent a letter of her own asking for help verifying immigration status for people who are registered to vote in Texas but who haven’t verified their status through the Department of Public Safety (DPS) or another state agency.
She wrote that federal law requires Texas to perform list maintenance and the immigration agency has a duty to help with that. But the ACLU of Texas is concerned the state is not using the federal immigration resources correctly.
“What the Texas secretary of state is proposing to do is to take an essentially random assortment of voters from these rolls and then send them to a federal immigration agency to verify against data that is not meant to be used for this purpose,” Harris said.
Gov. Abbott’s push to clear the voter rolls
Just a month ago, Gov. Greg Abbott touted the state’s removal of about 1 million people from the voter rolls since 2021. A large majority of that number included voters who had died or moved out of Texas. Abbott said about 6,500 of those were potential noncitizens.
Since Abbott’s announcement and now following Paxton’s, several advocacy groups have been worried about the timing of this potential voter roll purge.
“Federal law actually requires that there should be some types of routine cleaning of voter rolls and making sure that they're accurate,” Harris said. “However, federal law, the National Voter Registration Act, prevents any mass voter purges from happening within 90 days of an election, which we are well within.”
Concerns about a repeat of 2019
The ACLU of Texas expressed its concern that this request could also turn into a similar situation to what happened in 2019. At that time, Texas came up with a list of about 100,000 voters they suspected to be noncitizens, but the majority were found to actually be eligible voters. That led to the then-Texas Secretary of State David Whitely resigning.
“We've seen from Texas’s past voter purges just like this one that they always result in voters of color and naturalized citizens being the ones that are targeted,” Harris said.
How many voters could be affected by this?
Nelson’s letter does not specifically mention the number of voters her office is requesting information for. In fact, she said they are still compiling the list.
But in Paxton’s initial letter to Nelson, he wrote that it would be about 1 million people. He said with about 18 million registered voters and counting, it would be a “relatively small percentage” of registered voters.
The secretary’s letter requests the federal immigration agency returns this citizenship verification information by Oct. 2. Nelson said once that information is received, it would be turned over to county voter registrars.
The Secretary of State's Office responded to KVUE’s request for comment by saying that any maintenance performed by the office complies with state and federal law. KVUE has not yet received a response from the AG’s office.