Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has written to the Biden-Harris administration urging it to provide data that would help identify up to half a million people who could be erroneously registered to vote in the state but not be a citizen.
Paxton, a Republican, said that the Biden-Harris administration has 'legal obligations' to hand over such information so that the Lone Star state can help determine the citizenship status of certain registered voters who do not have a state of Texas-issued driver’s license or identification card since those are only issued after citizen checks.
Non-U.S. citizens lawfully present cannot legally vote but can lawfully apply for and receive a driver’s license or ID card.
Paxton said he is investigating those registered voters so Texas can be in compliance with federal and state election laws which prohibit non-U.S. citizens from voting. He penned his letter Monday to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Ur Jaddou.
'I demand full cooperation from the federal government to ensure that any noncitizens remaining on Texas’s voter registration rolls are identified,' Paxton said in a statement. 'The Biden-Harris Administration is legally obligated to assist States in doing so, and it is imperative that we use every tool available to uphold the integrity of our elections.'
Paxton said that while it is a crime for noncitizens to register to vote, federal law paradoxically creates opportunities for non-citizens to illegally register to vote while also prohibiting states from requiring voters to have proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections.
He said it is particularly troubling given the current scale of illegal immigration and that the Senate has not passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act ('SAVE Act'), which would allow states to ensure that votes are being cast legally by eligible voters. He said that requiring proof of citizenship is a commonsense measure that helps identify illegal registration.
Paxton has obtained a list of approximately 454,289 Texas registered voters who have never had their citizenship verified. The list is derived from the Texas Secretary of State’s (SOS) computerized list of voters the office is required to maintain.
'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 wrote in the letter.
'Indeed, a recent SOS audit verified that over 1,300 noncitizens were registered to vote in the four randomly chosen counties that were subject to an election audit—and that is just what was verifiable. That is 1,300 too many when so many of our federal, state, and local elections are decided by a handful of votes.'
Paxton has been trying to crack down hard on non-citizens voting.
In August, his office’s Election Integrity unit executed searches in three South Texas counties as part of his ongoing probe to investigate fraud and ballot harvesting allegations.
In the same month, Gov. Greg Abbott announced 6,500 potential noncitizens had been removed from the voter rolls since 2021. Approximately 1,930 had a voter history.
Republicans have raised concerns about voter integrity issues and non-citizens being registered to vote ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
Officials in Oregon announced Monday that they have identified an additional 302 people on the state’s voter rolls who didn’t provide proof of citizenship when they were registered to vote. The announcement comes just two weeks after officials in the Beaver State said 1,259 possible noncitizens have been registered to vote since 2021, bringing the total number of mistaken registrations to 1,561.
Last month, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that nearly 98,000 people whose U.S. citizenship has not been confirmed will be allowed to vote in the upcoming state and local elections.
