AUSTIN (Nexstar) — Texas has removed 1.1 million people from voter rolls since 2021, Gov. Greg Abbott’s office announced Monday, highlighting efforts to clean up election data and ensure legal registration.
That includes 6,500 potential noncitizens and 457,000 deceased people, according to data the governor’s office provided.
“Election integrity is essential to our democracy,” Abbott said. “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.”
Top Texas Republicans have dedicated significant time and resources to targeting voter fraud, though cases in Texas are exceedingly rare.
The review comes after Abbott signed Senate Bill 1 in 2021, which increased the penalty for lying while registering to vote to a state jail felony and requires the Secretary of State to audit random county election offices every two years.
On Monday, the Texas House Elections Committee heard testimony on the results of their most recent audit.
The main focus was Harris County, home to about one-in-six Texans and the target of significant state scrutiny after errors in their recent elections.
The state’s audit found Harris County “failed to estimate and issue the required amount of ballot paper resulting in interruptions in voting in at least 19 polling locations” in 2022, failed to properly train election workers, and did not maintain their voter rolls properly.”
“Systemic failures by the Harris County Elections Administrator to
properly distribute election supplies, including ballots, train election workers, and maintain the voter roll have contributed to a breakdown in public trust in the Harris County election system,” the audit states.
Since those errors came to light, the county’s Elections Administrator has been dissolved. But the state said the county still needs more oversight. The state will assign inspectors to check in on election records and observe ballot counting during the November election period.
Still, lawmakers from both parties stressed the integrity of Texas elections and encouraged Texans to vote with faith that the system is fair, accurate and secure.
“What we want is our voters to say, ‘these are fair, these are transparent, my vote counts.’ As a state, we need to be the gold standard for the country, and the country, the gold standard for the world,” State Rep. Mano DeAyala, R-Houston, said.
Eagle Pass Democrat Eddie Morales called state investigations into voter fraud and ballot harvesting a “scare tactic.”
“This false narrative that there’s all these undocumented folks that are registering to vote, that our election system somehow is rigged… it’s not,” Morales said. “It is anticipated that there will not be any problems in the November election. We have a great checks and balances system in place.”
The last day to register to vote in the November election is Oct. 7. Check your voter registration at VoteTexas.gov.