Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Monday demanded the Biden-Harris administration help his office confirm the citizenship status of nearly half a million registered voters in Texas.
Paxton asked U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Ur Jaddou to hand over data on roughly 454,300 Texas registered voters who have never had their citizenship verified, according to a letter submitted by Paxton’s office. The demand, Paxton says, is part of his effort to ensure compliance with federal and state election laws against non-citizen participation in elections.
“Although federal and state law prohibits non-citizens from voting, federal law paradoxically creates opportunities for non-citizens to illegally register to vote while prohibiting States from requiring voters to have proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections — a common sense measure to identify illegal registration,” Paxton wrote to Jaddou. “Under any circumstances, this federal prohibition against citizenship verification makes little sense, but it is especially troubling given the current scale of the illegal immigration crisis.”
“For these reasons, Texans are increasingly concerned about the possibility of non-citizen voting, and I have a responsibility to uphold the integrity of our elections,” the Republican attorney general continued.
As part of Paxton’s investigation into the extent to which non-citizens have unlawfully registered to vote or have already voted in Texas, the attorney general obtained the list of roughly 454,300 registered voters from the Texas Secretary of State’s office who purportedly have not had their citizenship verified.
“Although I have no doubt the vast majority of the voters on the list are citizens who are eligible to vote, I am equally certain that Texans have no way of knowing whether or not any of the voters on the list are noncitizens who are ineligible to vote,” Paxton said.
The attorney general explained how a recent Texas Secretary of State audit confirmed that there were more than 1,300 non-citizens registered to vote in four counties that were chosen at random.
Citizenship status is automatically verified when Texas residents use their driver’s license or other state-issued ID card to register to vote, Paxton explained. This verification is necessary, he said, because non-citizens lawfully living in the state cannot vote, but they can legally apply for and obtain a driver’s license or ID card.
The individuals on Paxton’s list allegedly did not use a driver’s license or another ID to register to vote, and their information could not be gathered by the Texas Department of Public Safety, resulting in their unverified status, Paxton said. The attorney general is giving USCIS until Oct. 17 to comply with his demands.
Paxton’s letter follows other legal efforts across the country to ensure voter integrity, specifically regarding the threat of non-citizen participation in elections. The Arizona Secretary of State was sued last week for allegedly refusing to hand over the names of 200,000 registered voters who had not provided proof of their citizenship.
USCIS did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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