Texas officials said they are working with local election officials to make sure no eligible voters are removed from the state’s voter rolls, as they work to identify noncitizens on the rolls.
Officials are “continuing to provide information to the counties to assist them in verifying eligibility of Texas voters,” the Texas Secretary of State’s office said in a statement.
Travis County Tax Assessor-Collector Bruce Elfant, who manages the county's voter rolls, said the Secretary of State's office told him Tuesday to expect a new list of people the Department of Public Safety has cleared as being citizens.
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Other media outlets have reported that local election officials received notice from the Secretary of State that it is sending out a new list.
State election officials sent voter registrars an advisory Friday, saying the Department of Public Safety suspects as many as 95,000 people are registered to vote who aren't citizens. The agency created the list based on people who identified as noncitizens when they obtained a state ID in the past 22 years and also registered to vote in that time.
Voting rights groups said those people likely became naturalized citizens in that timeframe. They say the state is using the list to intimidate new citizens from voting.
Meanwhile, the League of United Latin Americans, a civil rights group, filed a lawsuit against Texas officials in federal court, arguing the voter purge violates the Voting Rights Act.
Domingo Garcia, the group’s national president, said LULAC wants the state to show how it compiled the list. He said he also wants the court to stop local election officials from removing voters based on that list.
In its statement Tuesday, the Secretary of State’s office said it is looking to remove the names of people who provided proof of citizenship when they registered to vote.
“This is to ensure that any registered voters who provided proof of citizenship at the time they registered to vote will not be required to provide proof of citizenship as part of the counties’ examination,” officials said in a statement.
There is no law in Texas that requires people to show proof of citizenship before registering to vote, however.
