Governor Abbott Announces Over 1 Million Ineligible Voters Removed From Voter Rolls
August 26, 2024 | Austin, TX
Governor Greg Abbott today announced that since signing Senate Bill 1 into law in 2021, Texas has removed over one million people from the state’s voter rolls, including people who moved out-of-state, are deceased, and are noncitizens. That removal process will continue to be ongoing.
“I have signed the strongest election laws in the nation to protect the right to vote and to crackdown on illegal voting,” said Governor Abbott. “These reforms have led to the removal of over one million ineligible people from our voter rolls in the last three years, including noncitizens, deceased voters, and people who moved to another state. The Secretary of State and county voter registrars have an ongoing legal requirement to review the voter rolls, remove ineligible voters, and refer any potential illegal voting to the Attorney General’s Office and local authorities for investigation and prosecution. Illegal voting in Texas will never be tolerated. We will continue to actively safeguard Texans’ sacred right to vote while also aggressively protecting our elections from illegal voting.”
Since Governor Abbott signed Senate Bill 1 into law in 2021, Texas has removed over 1 million people from the voter rolls, including:
Over 6,500 noncitizens
Over 6,000 voters who have a felony conviction
Over 457,000 deceased people
Over 463,000 voters on the suspense list
Over 134,000 voters who responded to an address confirmation notice that they had moved
Over 65,000 voters who failed to respond to a notice of examination
Over 19,000 voters who requested to cancel their registration
Of the over 6,500 potential noncitizens removed from the voter rolls, approximately 1,930 have a voter history. The Secretary of State’s office is in the process of sending all 1,930 records to the Attorney General’s Office for investigation and potential legal action. To better crackdown on illegal voting, Governor Abbott signed House Bill 1243 into law last year, increasing the penalty for illegal voting, including voting by noncitizens, to a second-degree felony.
In 2021, Governor Abbott signed Senate Bill 1, Senate Bill 1113, and House Bill 574 into law. Senate Bill 1 elevated lying while registering to vote to a state jail felony, criminalized ballot harvesting, required the Secretary of State to conduct randomized audits of elections every two years, banned distribution of unsolicited mail-in ballot applications and ballots, and required ID for mail-in ballots. Senate Bill 1113 empowered the Secretary of State to withhold funds from counties that fail to remove noncitizens from their voter roll. House Bill 574 made it a second-degree felony to knowingly count invalid votes or refuse to count valid votes.
In 2017, the Governor signed Senate Bill 5, which increased the penalty for election workers who knowingly permit noncitizens and other ineligible persons to vote.