(The Center Square) – Since a new law was enacted in 2021, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office has removed more than 1.1 million people from the state’s voter rolls.
The removal process is ongoing, Gov. Greg Abbott said when announcing the updated removal numbers.
Those removed include noncitizens illegally registered to vote, those who moved out of state, the deceased, those with a felony conviction, among others.
“Election integrity is essential to our democracy,” Abbott said. “I have signed the strongest election laws in the nation to protect the right to vote and to crackdown 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.
“The Secretary of State and county voter registrars have an ongoing 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. 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.”
The majority removed total over 463,000 on the suspense list; followed by more than 457,000 deceased, 134,000 voters who responded to an address confirmation that they had moved, 65,000 who failed to respond to a notice of examination, 19,000 who requested to cancel their voter registration, 6,500 noncitizens and 6,000 with a felony conviction.
Of the more than 6,500 potential noncitizens who were removed from the voter rolls, approximately 1,930 have a voter history, according to the data. The Secretary of State’s office is in the process of sending all 1,930 records to the Attorney General’s Office for investigation and potential legal action.
Cleaning the voters rolls stems from several bills signed into law by Abbott. The new laws increase penalties and require the Secretary of State’s Office to conduct audits, among other measures.
In 2023, Abbott signed House Bill 1243 into law, which increased the penalty for illegal voting, including voting by noncitizens, to a second-degree felony.
In 2021, Abbott signed Senate Bill 1, Senate Bill 1113 and House Bill 574 into law. Senate Bill 1 implemented several changes, including increasing the penalty for lying on a voter registration form to a jailable felony, criminalizing ballot harvesting, banning local jurisdictions from distributing unsolicited mail-in ballot applications and ballots as Harris County attempted to. The law also requires ID to be used and matched for mail-in ballots. It also requires the Secretary of State to conduct randomized audits of elections every two years.
Senate Bill 1113 directed the Secretary of State to withhold funds from counties whose administrators fail to remove noncitizens from their voter rolls. House Bill 574 increased the penalty for those who knowingly count invalid votes or refuse to count valid votes to a second-degree felony.
In 2017, Abbott signed Senate Bill 5 into law to increase the penalty for election workers who knowingly permit noncitizens and other ineligible persons to vote.
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