Texas lawmakers require voters to provide proof of citizenship

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Texas lawmakers on Wednesday announced plans to consider a new law that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote, although even one of the strongest supporters of such a law acknowledged that cases in which non-citizens vote be rare.

During a Senate State Affairs Committee hearing, lawmakers expressed interest in reviving the legislation along the lines of a proof-of-citizenship requirement in Arizona, the only state currently with such a requirement in effect.

Gov. Dan Patrick called the hearing on non-citizen voting after Gov. Greg Abbott issued a press release bragging that the state had purged more than a potential 6,500 non-citizens from its voter rolls. An investigation published this week by ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and Votebeat found that the governor’s number was likely inflated and, in some cases, incorrect.

The secretary of state confirmed the news organization’s reporting during Wednesday’s hearing after Democratic Sen. Judith Zaffirini cited the article’s findings and pressured Christina Adkins, the director of state elections.

The news organizations found that between September 2021 and August 2024, counties removed 581 people from the rolls on the grounds that they were not citizens, according to a report submitted by Secretary of State Abbott. The governor’s news release combined that number with a separate number of people who were removed from the lists because they did not respond to letters alerting them to questions about their citizenship. Initially it was said that more than 6,500 non-citizens had been axed. But U.S. citizens who simply never received or responded to such letters are almost certainly included in the governor’s numbers.

In addition, the news organizations have so far found at least 10 U.S. citizens in three Texas counties who were misclassified as non-citizens or removed from the rolls because they did not respond to a notice asking questions about their citizenship. The news organizations’ previous story reported that nine citizens were found; Reporters have since confirmed another.

“So the actual number goes down to 581 who were identified as non-citizens?” Zaffirini said.

“I would say 581 is the number we know,” Adkins said, also acknowledging that failure to respond to a message does not mean a person is not a U.S. citizen.

After the hearing, Zaffirini said she was concerned that the heavy focus on ensuring non-citizens are not added to voter rolls “will in some cases be interpreted as voter intimidation,” even if that is not the intention.

Still, several lawmakers on the committee, which consists of nine Republicans and three Democrats, said they believe the state needs to adopt similar requirements to Arizona’s 2004 law. Only six committee members attended all or part of Wednesday’s hearing, which covered several topics. Zaffirini was the only Democrat there.

Hughes proposed a law last year that would require people to show proof of citizenship before being allowed to vote, but it failed to advance. On Wednesday, he said he planned to resubmit the motion at the next meeting.

“We have to do it,” Hughes said.

Republicans across the country have repeatedly raised unfounded concerns in recent weeks about non-citizens voting, claims that former President Donald Trump and his party are using to raise doubts about the integrity of the upcoming November election.

In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton has urged Secretary of State Jane Nelson to request the federal government’s assistance in identifying potential noncitizens on the registries. On Wednesday, he and 15 other attorneys general sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, saying the agency had not responded quickly or helpfully enough to their requests for assistance.

Ken Cuccinelli, a former acting director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and former acting deputy secretary of DHS, told lawmakers at the hearing that obtaining information on non-citizens will be costly and unreliable, and said a USCIS database was “not particularly well designed”. or easy to use.

But the database is “the only database of noncitizens in the United States that we have,” he said, adding: “There is no database of who is a citizen.”

The US CIS has discussed back and forth what it can do with officials in several states, including Texas.

Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Republican from Houston, acknowledged that such cases of noncitizens voting are rare, but recalled his experience serving as a voter registrar in Harris County more than 20 years ago to some to be removed from the voter lists.

“Well, small numbers, but things actually happened,” he said. “So when we talk about this, it’s important to know that there are actually incidents.”

States should be able to use Social Security data to determine citizenship, Bettencourt said in an interview after Wednesday’s hearing. The data would not include every person living in the United States — not everyone has a Social Security number — but would cover most people, he said.

Adopting a system like Arizona’s would be a major change for Texas and would create new administrative burdens.

Under federal law, all U.S. voters must confirm their citizenship to register, but are not required to provide proof of it. In 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Arizona must allow residents who do not provide proof to vote in federal elections. That means the state has a unique two-tier system, with a separate “federal-only” list of about 40,000 people who can vote in federal elections but not in state and local elections.

But there were glitches. Arizona officials discovered this summer that the state has for decades accused some voters of producing documents proving U.S. citizenship when, in fact, they had never been asked to do so.

The error, which affected at least 218,000 long-time residents of the state, arose because the Department of Motor Vehicles misrepresented the type of driver’s license voters had, and county clerks relied on that driver’s license information to verify her citizenship when registering a voter. The Arizona Supreme Court ruled last month that voters would not have to show proof of citizenship before the November election, but they would have to show it before the next election.

Cuccinelli, who is now chairman of the conservative Election Transparency Initiative, praised Arizona’s divided system.

“There are bad actors. “They’re in the minority, but you can target them a lot easier if they’re just on your smaller list,” he said.

Natalia Contreras handles election administration and voting access for Votebeat in collaboration with the Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at [email protected].

Vianna Davila is an investigative reporter at ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. Contact them at [email protected].

Lexi Churchill, ProPublica and James Barragán, The Texas Tribune contributed to this story.