Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced Monday that the state has removed 1.1 million names from its voter rolls after determining they were ineligible following the 2020 presidential election.
Governor Abbott signed SB1, an election integrity bill, into law in 2021, requiring the Secretary of State to work with the Department of Public Safety to compare citizenship status information in the department's database with the voter rolls. This check must be done “monthly.”
“Election integrity is essential to our democracy.” Abbott said:“I signed the toughest elections bill in the nation to protect the right to vote and crack down on illegal voting.”
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“These reforms have resulted in more than one million ineligible voters being removed from the voter rolls over the past three years, including foreign nationals, deceased voters and people who have moved to other states.”
A voting booth at Glass Elementary School in Eagle Pass, Texas. (Mark Felix/AFP via Getty Images)
The Texas government has tasked Attorney General Ken Plaxton with prosecuting cases involving ineligible voters in elections.
“The Secretary of State and county registrars of voters have an ongoing legal obligation to review voter rolls, remove ineligible voters, and refer any possible illegal votes to the Attorney General's office and local authorities to investigate and prosecute,” Abbott said.
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He added, “Illegal voting will never be tolerated in Texas. We will continue to vigorously defend the sacred right of Texans to vote and vigorously protect our elections from illegal votes.”
Texas Governor Greg Abbott spoke at a press conference at the State Capitol in Austin. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
The governor's office provided a table breaking down the reasons for removal from voter rolls and the estimated number of individuals in each category.
The largest group of Texans disqualified in the audit were “withholding voters” — people who couldn't properly verify their residential address in the state. That category included more than 463,000 people.
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The second most prominent category was the “deceased” whose names were still on the voter rolls, numbering more than 457,000.
The governor's office said about 6,500 foreigners had been removed from the rolls, including about 2,000 suspected of having voted in past elections.
