Abbott Removes Over 1 Million Names from Voter Rolls in Texas
In a recent press release, Gov. Abbott announced a massive name-purge for those who have moved out of the state, have died, or other reasons since 2021 but still remain listed as registered voters in Texas.
In a post to X, Gov. Abbott stated that the main motivator for this action was election integrity in Texas. Eliminating illegal voting was also on the forefront of this decision.
Within the press release, the number of names removed from voter polls included noncitizens, voters with felony convictions, those deceased, suspended voters, those who have confirmed their address change and voters who requested to cancel their registration.
The breakdown of each category was also provided since 2021:
- >6,500 - noncitizens
- >6,000 - voters who have a felony conviction
- >457,000 - deceased people
- >463,000 - voters on the suspense list
- >134,000 - voters who responded to an address confirmation notice that they had moved
- >65,000 voters who failed to respond to a notice of examination
- >19,000 - voters who requested to cancel their registration
- Total: over 1.1 million
2021 Impact on Election Integrity in Texas
2021 was the year Abbott signed Senate Bills 1 and 1113, and House Bill 574 into law.
- SB 1 raised lying during voter registration to a state felony, where the Secretary of State must also conduct random election audits every two years
- SB 1113 gave extended authority to the Secretary of State to withhold funds from Texas counties that fail to remove noncitizens from their voter roll
- HB 574 targeted ballot counters, raising to second-degree felonies the act of knowingly counting invalid votes or refusing to count valid ones