The move escalates a brewing fight with Texas Republicans over initiatives to proactively send applications to unregistered voters.
to receive twice-monthly updates on our year-long initiative dedicated to boosting civic engagement and chronicling how democracy is experienced in Texas.The 3-1 Commissioners Court vote escalates a brewing fight between Texas Republicans and some of the state’s largest counties over initiatives to proactively send registration applications to people who are eligible but unregistered to vote.
He noted the company uses a mix of public records and county data to identify people who could have recently moved and are unregistered, with a contractual obligation to contact “every eligible person who arises in any of those datasets.”to Bexar County commissioners warning the deal was illegal because the county “can take no action without a grant of legal authority,” and Texas law does not explicitly allow counties to mail out unsolicited registration forms.
Abbott’s office said the names scrapped from the voter rolls included more than 6,500 noncitizens who shouldn’t have been registered, and about 1,930 of those had a voting history. Voter watchdog and voting rights groups have questioned the figure, noting that Texas has wrongly flagged people as noncitizens before.
When voter registrars receive applications, they send them to the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, where they are checked for eligibility against Department of Public Safety and Social Security Administration data. In addition, local voter registrars work with their county district attorney’s office to check citizenship status using responses from jury summons questionnaires.
Democratic Commissioner Rebeca Clay-Flores cast the torrent of GOP criticism as a “dog and pony show” that she said was based on false rhetoric aimed at making people “intimidated to vote.” She also dismissed concerns about noncitizens registering to vote.
Demographics Politics State Government Voting Bexar County Harris County Texas Legislature
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