Texas voter purge could send chilling message, lawmakers and advocates warn

Texans who were wrongly removed from the state’s voter rolls or had their voter registrations suspended have little time to change course, Democratic state lawmakers and civil rights advocates warned Thursday, days after Republican leaders announced the removal of more than 1.1 million names from their voter rolls.

States are required by law to regularly update their voter rolls to remove people who have died, moved or been otherwise deemed ineligible. But Republican Gov. Greg Abbott touted systematic voter roll maintenance in a series of election integrity bills he signed in 2021.

“Texas’ strict voting laws have removed more than a million ineligible voters from our rolls,” Abbott wrote on X on Monday.

Figures released by Abbott’s office show that more than 134,000 voters removed from the state’s voter rolls since September 2021 have confirmed they have moved elsewhere, and another 457,000 have died.

But most of the removed voters, more than 463,000, had been placed on a suspended voter list. Names on that list are removed if the state receives information that voters have permanently moved from their registered address or fail to vote for two consecutive election cycles.

Although the latest numbers of purged voters appear high, they are consistent with routine maintenance of voter lists over the past few years.

But Democratic state officials and Houston City Council members remain alarmed by the more than 2.1 million Texas voters who remain on the suspended list, largely because county officials don’t have their current addresses on file.

With nearly 13% of the state’s 17.9 million registered voters on the suspended list, “this represents additional obstacles to making their votes count,” state Rep. Christina Morales said in Spanish at a news conference.

Charleae Vincent, a Harris County resident, said she was placed on the suspended voter list even though she was a regular voter.

Voters like Vincent receive new voter cards in the mail every two years. While she was waiting for her card, she received a letter telling her that her voting rights had been suspended.

When she investigated what might have happened, Vincent discovered that her voter card never left the post office because the machine couldn’t read the address on the envelope, she said.

Often, when voter registration cards or jury summonses are mailed and returned as undeliverable, their names are added to the suspended list on the assumption that their addresses may be outdated.

Solving the problem was complicated, Vincent said. She had to travel 27 miles and meet in person with people who could help her get her name off the list.

State Rep. Gene Wu urged “everyone who thinks they are currently registered to check their registration today” to see if they have been added to the suspended list.

Voters whose status is suspended can still vote as long as they update their address online before Texas voter registration closes on October 7. That should help remove people from the list in time for Election Day.

If voters discover they are still on the suspended list after showing up at their polling station on Election Day, they can still vote after completing a “declaration of residence” form.

Voters whose status is suspended and who have moved to other counties will be required to vote in the counties where they previously resided or may be asked to submit provisional ballots.

Voters on the suspended list who were wrongly removed will have to re-register to vote by Oct. 7, said Annette Ramirez, a Democrat running for Harris County tax collector.

Sergio Lira of the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC, the nation’s oldest Latino civil rights organization, expressed concern about the timing of Abbott’s announcement.

On August 20, the homes of several LULAC members, the chairman of the Tejano Democrats, a House candidate, and a state mayor were raided. State Attorney General Ken Paxton said the raids were related to an ongoing investigation into election integrity. Paxton, a Republican, has also openly made baseless allegations of voter fraud.

“It’s done strategically,” Lira said.

Lira and Democratic lawmakers added that they fear such efforts by top Republican leaders could further intimidate voters, particularly in Latino communities.

“When these decisions and these tactics are made…Latinos are most likely and disproportionately impacted by these actions,” said Houston City Council member Mario Castillo.

Republicans in Texas and other Republican states have made election integrity a major part of their campaign communications ahead of the presidential election, creating fertile ground for false narratives about “rigged elections” and non-citizen voting that suggest these problems are more common than they actually are.

For example, a 2017 study of the 2016 election by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law found that “out of 23.5 million votes cast, election officials found only about 30 instances of potential noncitizen voting,” the Associated Press reported.

Under federal law, only U.S. citizens can vote in federal elections, and regular updates to state voter rolls help identify and exclude ineligible voters, including noncitizens.

The latest data released by Abbott shows that efforts to keep voter rolls up to date have removed at least 6,500 “potential non-citizens” from voter registration rolls, and the vast majority of them had no recorded voting history.

In this context, Wu said, it is important that “every person eligible to vote registers to vote.”