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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said this week that more than 1 million people have been removed from the state's voter rolls over the past three years, touting the removals as part of an effort to protect voting rights and prevent voter fraud — an already illegal and exceedingly rare occurrence that Republicans have made a centerpiece of their attacks on immigration.
In a statement on Monday, the Republican governor attributed the mass purge of ineligible voters from state records — which he said included “noncitizens, deceased voters, and people who moved to another state” — to election legislation he signed in 2021.
“Illegal voting in Texas will never be tolerated,” Abbott said. “We will continue to actively safeguard Texans’ sacred right to vote while also aggressively protecting our elections from illegal voting.”
But his statement doesn't hold up under scrutiny. Election experts have said that such removals are simply routine voter roll maintenance (not to mention a requirement under federal law) and warned that Abbott's remarks could reinforce distrust in the election process. (“A spokesman for Mr. Abbott referred questions to the secretary of state’s office,” The New York Times reported.) A coalition of voting rights groups in the state have also raised concerns that eligible voters may have been wrongly flagged as noncitizens and removed from voter rolls — which is already happening in other states, as NBC News reported.
Abbott's claim that he is protecting voter rights is also suspect, given that Texas Republicans have been accused of creating unnecessary burdens for nonwhite and disabled voters by limiting access to the ballot box, especially in blue pockets of the state.
Just last week, state Attorney General Ken Paxton ordered raids on the homes of prominent Latino Democrats and members of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), a nonpartisan Latino civil rights groups. Paxton claimed that the operation is part of an "election integrity investigation," but his office did not explain why specific homes were targeted. LULAC said that it had not been informed of the details of the allegations against any of its members. The group has asked the U.S. Justice Department to open a probe into Paxton's office for potentially violating the Voting Rights Act of 1965.