The Texas Secretary of State’s office this week said it’s flagged more than 2,700 potential noncitizens on statewide voter rolls, including 201 in Bexar County.
In a statement, Republican Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson said she’s asked county elections departments to determine whether the flagged voters are actually illegible to cast ballots and remove those who can’t prove their citizenship.
Nelson said her team came up with its list after comparing federal immigration data with records of the state’s more than 18 million registered voters. The crosscheck was enabled by the federal government’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database, a resource provided to states at no cost by the Trump administration.
“Only eligible United States citizens may participate in our elections,” said Nelson, an appointee of Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican who’s frequently echoed President Donald Trump’s debunked claims of widespread election fraud.
“The Trump Administration’s decision to give states free and direct access to this data set for the first time has been a game changer, and we appreciate the partnership with the federal government to verify the citizenship of those on our voter rolls and maintain accurate voter lists.”
However, civil rights groups said they’re suspicious of Nelson’s claim, which comes as early voting for November’s election is already underway. Further, they argue that Texas’ previous claims to have uncovered widespread noncitizen voting have been riddled with errors.
Even if the entire list is proven to be comprised of noncitizens with a voting history, its 2,724 potential voters represents just 0.0146451613% of the state’s 18 million registered voters.
Bexar County had the third-highest number of potential noncitizens on the list, trailing Harris County’s 362 and Dallas County’s 277.
The Current reached out Bexar County Elections Administrator Michele Carew about how the county is handling Nelson’s order but received no response by press time.
This isn’t the first time an Abbott-appointed Secretary of State Abbott has pushed claims of widespread voter fraud from noncitizens. Indeed, it appears to be a recent requisite of the position.
In 2019, appointed — but, at the time, still-unconfirmed — Secretary of State David Whitley, a longtime Abbott staffer, said his office had flagged 95,000 potential noncitizens after comparing state voter rolls against Department of Public Safety data.
Abbott promptly seized on Whitley’s announcement to stoke fears of widespread voter fraud by noncitizens. However, social scientists have repeatedly found such instances to be extremely rare and statistically insignificant, the New York Times reports.
Indeed, a 2017 analysis from progressive nonprofit the Brennan Center for Justice showed that incidents of potential noncitizen voting in the 2016 election accounted for just 0.0001% of the 23.5 million votes cast. Even the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, has refuted claims of widespread voter fraud by noncitizens, calling them “bogus.”
Ultimately, an analysis of Whitley’s list showed that it included at least 25,000 naturalized citizens, likely more, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
Whitley resigned in disgrace over the botched purge, which also resulted in lawsuits from LULAC and ACLU-Texas. In the end, the state abandoned the effort and rescind the list altogether.
Pattern of errors
Similarly, Florida spearheaded an attempted a 2012 voter purge, initially claiming it turned up 180,000 noncitizens on voter rolls. Under increasing scrutiny, state officials continued revising that number downward until they arrived at a final total of 85.
The Obama administration’s Justice Department sued Florida over the program, arguing that U.S. citizens ended up in its crosshairs.
Officials in Colorado, when conducting a similar voter purge in 2011, started with a list of 11,805 supposed noncitizens, the Texas Tribune reports. Officials later whittled the list down to 141, only 35 of whom had a voting history — and even the veracity of that meager list was left in doubt.
Previous Abbott-appointed Texas Secretaries of State who have pursued claims of voter fraud by non-citizens also include former San Antonio mayoral candidate Rolando Pablos, who lost to Gina Ortiz Jones in this summer’s election. Pablos started the process of comparing the DPS list with voter rolls in 2017, which continued under Whitley, who ultimately resigned due to the bungled purge.
The black eye over Whitley’s mistakes didn’t appear to deter Abbott, however.
In summer 2023, the governor issued a press release boasting that the state had removed more than potential 6,500 noncitizens from its voter rolls under Nelson, whom he’d appointed mere months earlier. An October 2024 investigation by Votebeat, ProPublica and the Texas Tribune later found Abbott’s data was inaccurate.
Casting doubt
Nelson, a Republican businesswoman, began using the feds’ SAVE database when it was unveiled this spring. Within three weeks, she claimed an early victory of discovering 33 voters on Texas rolls who may have been noncitizens.
Now, with early voting under way on the heels of a statewide voter registration backlog, voting rights advocates are eyeing Nelson’s announcement with suspicion.
“Counties and the public should treat these numbers skeptically,” said Tommy Buser-Clancy, senior staff attorney at ACLU of Texas. “Time and again the Texas government has made similar claims only for them to fall apart under scrutiny due to data rife with errors and processes that unfairly and illegally ensnare naturalized citizens.”
Officials with the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) confirmed that they’re weighing legal action to counter the state’s latest voter purge.
“We will consider litigation,” Gabriel Rosales, Texas LULAC State Director, said in a text to the Current. “It appears to be an inefficient use of taxpayer funds, particularly given the 2,700 individuals are likely to be recent graduates of the citizenship process. It’s a narrative they are pushing to justify their voter suppression tactics being deployed against the Latino communities in Texas!”
Meanwhile, the SAVE database is already the subject of a class action lawsuit by voting rights and electronic privacy groups claiming it was a violation of voters’ personal data.
Voters flagged on the list have 30 days to respond to their county elections department and prove their citizenship by furnishing official documentation — such as a passport or birth certificate — before their registration is canceled.
However, roughly 7% of Texans who are U.S. citizens of voting age would have trouble showing documents that prove their citizenship, the Current has previously reported.
That suggests some U.S. citizens erroneously included on the list could automatically have their registrations cancelled at the end of the 30 days if they’re unable to produce the needed documents.
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