Texas’s effort to clean up its voter rolls has resulted in more than 1 million names being removed, Gov. Greg Abbott announced Monday.
Since signing Senate Bill 1 into law in 2021, individuals who have moved out of the state, died, or are noncitizens have been taken off voter rolls.
“Election integrity is essential to our democracy,” Abbott said in a statement. “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.”
Of the 1 million names removed, more than 6,500 were noncitizens and about 1,930 of them have a voter history, the governor’s office said.
“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,” the press release said. “To better crackdown on illegal voting, Governor Abbott signed House Bill 1243 into law last year, increasing the penalty for illegal voting, including voting by noncitizens, to a second-degree felony.”
