Monday is the last day for Texans to in the November election, which means procrastinators will likely cause the state鈥檚 voter rolls to grow by the thousands as the clock ticks down toward midnight.
At the same time, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is hoping the federal government will help him identify noncitizens so that he can stop them from voting.
Paxton sent a letter on Monday to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services requesting the federal government confirm the citizenship status of more than 450,000 of Texas鈥� registered voters.
That group is made up of people that did not use a state-issued driver's license or ID card when they registered to vote (The state accepts when people register to vote beyond just state IDs).
Paxton鈥檚 move comes on the heels of a request to Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson that her office provide a list of these voters. The AG gave Nelson a to provide the list.
What Paxton will do if the federal government is unable to confirm the citizenship status of some of the voters on that list is unclear. Under , the state can no longer remove people from the voter rolls because it is less than 90 days before a federal election.
This is Paxton鈥檚 latest attempt to find ineligible voters, with an 鈥� a amongst Republican leaders across the country this year.
Bethany Albertson, a political scientist at UT Austin, recently told The Texas Newsroom that 鈥渢alk around voter fraud doesn鈥檛 match the reality.鈥�
鈥淲hen politicians push messages suggesting that voter fraud is rampant,鈥� she said, 鈥渋t sows distrust in elections.鈥�
The Brennan Center for Justice claims of illegal voting from politicians during the 2012, 2016 and 2020 elections. That found that most allegations of fraud were baseless or due to clerical errors and other forms of election misconduct.
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