Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) promoted the success of an election integrity bill he signed into law in 2021, which he said has removed over 1.1 million “ineligible” voters from the state’s voter rolls.
The Republican Party has made election integrity a major focus ahead of the 2024 presidential election, with Abbott signing Senate Bill 1 into law on Sept. 7, 2021. Among the 1.1 million removed from Texas’s voter rolls are over 457,000 people who died and over 463,000 people on the state’s suspense list, the governor said Monday.
“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,” Abbott said in a press release. “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.”
Abbott also noted how over 6,500 of these voters removed from Texas’s voter rolls were noncitizens, 1,930 of whom have a voting history. The Texas Secretary of State’s office is working on sending all 1,930 of these records to Attorney General Ken Paxton’s Office for investigation and any legal action.
The Texas governor’s news comes shortly after Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) issued an executive order to “protect legal voters and accurate counts,” which included “stringent ballot security, complete and thorough counting machine testing,” and “best-in-the-nation voter list maintenance.” The order also revealed that between January 2022 and July 2024, 6,303 noncitizens were removed from the state’s voter rolls.
Last week, America First Legal Executive Director Gene Hamilton spotlighted a law that states can use to keep illegal immigrants off of voter rolls. Hamilton explained that a section in the Immigration and Nationality Act allows states or local governments to receive information from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security “to verify or ascertain the citizenship states of any individual in their jurisdiction.”
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On Thursday, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to reinstate an Arizona law requiring those registering to vote to provide documentary proof of citizenship. However, the court left on hold separate provisions that would prevent people without proof of citizenship from voting in presidential elections or by mail if they registered to vote using a federal registration form.
Lara Trump, the co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, called the decision “a huge win” for the RNC and its pursuit of a legal and fair 2024 election. She also said the decision “sets precedent across the country” for other states to take similar action.