Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott announced Monday that his state has purged more than one million ineligible voters from voter rolls in the past several years, including thousands of noncitizens.
Since the Republican governor signed Senate Bill 1 into law in September 2021, Texas officials have removed more than 1.1 million people from state voter rolls, according to a press release from the governor’s office. The number includes hundreds of thousands of deceased individuals, hundreds of thousands on the suspense list and more than 100,000 individuals who failed to respond to an address confirmation notice, among other people who were deemed ineligible.
The purge also included more than 6,500 noncitizens who had managed to be included on the voter rolls, according to the governor.
“Election integrity is essential to our democracy,” Abbott said in a Monday 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,” Abbott continued. “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.”
Senate Bill 1 was created with the intention of beefing up election integrity, according to the governor’s office. The bill — which is now law — established uniform statewide voting hours, banned drive-through voting, provided more transparency by allowing poll watchers to better observe details of the election process and expanded voting access for voters who require more assistance.
The law also prohibits the dissemination of unsolicited applications for mail-in ballots, according to Abbott’s office.
The announcement follows record illegal immigration into the U.S. under the Biden-Harris administration, a crisis that Texas has uniquely faced given its extensive border with Mexico. More than eight million migrants have either illegally crossed through the U.S.-Mexico border or have arrived at ports of entry since the beginning of the Biden-Harris administration, according to the latest data from Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
Texas — along with a slate of other GOP-led states — has also passed legislation that empowers state and local law enforcement officials to crack on illegal immigration, arguing that federal officials have failed to properly address the crisis themselves.
As the November presidential election draws closer, states are cracking down on illegal migrants that somehow made it onto their voter rolls. Virginia GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin issued an executive order in July that seeks to bolster election integrity, with the state’s attorney general revealing that his office identified and removed 6,000 noncitizens from state voter rolls since he entered office.
In Maricopa County, Arizona, a major county in the swing state, the county recorder is facing a lawsuit from America First Legal for allegedly disregarding state law by not properly purging voter rolls of noncitizens.
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