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Questioned voter list includes 365 names from Hays

The state’s recent announcement that tens of thousands of registered voters might not be U.S. citizens spawned headlines about ineligible voters casting ballots. A press release issued Jan. 25 by Texas Secretary of State David Whitley’s office stated that the Department of Public Safety (DPS) identified approximately 95,000 individuals as non-U.S. citizens with voter registration records. The press release went on to say that approximately 58,000 of those individuals had voted in one or more Texas elections.

An advisory released by Keith Ingram, director of elections for the Texas secretary of state’s office, on Jan. 25 stated that the Secretary of State and DPS “spent time evaluating the data and refining the query to limit the information being provided to us for use in this list maintenance exercise to individuals who provided valid documents indicating the person is not a citizen of the United States at the time the person obtained a Driver License or Personal Identification Card.”

Noncitizens who are lawfully present in the United States can obtain driver’s licenses, but only U.S. citizens are eligible to vote, a press release from the state attorney general’s office notes. The people flagged as having questionable citizenship status had given DPS documentation showing that they were in the country legally but no evidence of citizenship. After compiling the lists of voters whose citizenship the state called into question, the state sent the lists to local election officials, giving them the option of investigating the voters on the lists.

Hays County election officials received a list of 365 names, Elections Administrator Jennifer Anderson said. In the meantime, a coalition of organizations, including the League of Women Voters and the ACLU sent a letter to the secretary of state’s office demanding that the advisory be rescinded and sent letters to county election officials reminding them that, “you have a responsibility to ensure that eligible voters remain on the rolls and are not removed erroneously.” 

Mere days after the advisory was issued, the Texas Tribune reported that the secretary of state’s office was contacting counties to let them know that some of the voters on those lists did not belong on the lists it sent out.

“Officials in five large counties — Harris, Travis, Fort Bend, Collin and Williamson — told The Texas Tribune they had received calls Tuesday from the secretary of state’s office indicating that some of the voters whose citizenship status the state said counties should consider checking should not actually be on those lists,” the Tribune reported.

In one case, all of the people on a county’s list were found to be citizens. The Waco Tribune reported that by the time local election officials downloaded the list of 366 registered voters the state had called into question, the state had called to tell the officials to disregard the list because the citizenship of everyone on the list was not in question.

Anderson said that as of Thursday, her office was “working through the list to determine how many can be eliminated through either naturalization or DPS error.”

She also noted that voter list maintenance is routine, though this incident has garnered more attention than usual.

“It’s important to note that list maintenance is not a new process,” she said. “We verify folks that are suspected to have moved, and may be deceased, etc. All are verified through a notice process. So while this may be in the spotlight, these processes are not new to voter registrars.”

Dripping Springs Century-News

P.O. Box 732
Dripping Springs, Texas 78620

Phone: (512) 858-4163
Fax: (512) 847-9054