AP Photo / David J. Phillip
At a press conference Thursday morning, elected officials from the city of Houston and Harris County sharply criticized the removal of more than two million voters from the state’s voter rolls.
The press conference took place days after Governor Greg Abbott announced More than a million people have been removed from the voter rolls for various reasons, including thousands of Texans who were on a “Suspense List” and could not resolve the issue.
“Election integrity is essential to our democracy,” Abbott said in a Monday press release announcing the purge. “We will continue to actively protect Texans’ sacred right to vote while aggressively protecting our elections from illegal voting.”
Houston City Council member Abbie Kamin called the timing of the cleanup “extremely problematic.”
“Voter purging – cleaning up the rolls – may be standard practice, but it is the politicization, the fear-mongering and the sowing of confusion that turns off and worries voters,” Kamin said.
According to elected officials, about 13 percent of Texas voters — more than two million people — are currently on the “tension list.” They can fix the problem, but it’s not easy.
When Charlene Vincent, a Harris County resident, checked her status, she found that her registration was suspended. She had to drive 27 miles to fix the problem in person at the Harris County Voter Registration Office.
“I would suggest that they provide that capacity across the county – that’s 1,700 square miles – so that people can more easily solve these problems locally,” Vincent said.
According to the Texas Secretary of State Voters on the Suspense List can continue to vote if they sign a “declaration of residence” before voting on election day.
The recent purge of the electoral rolls Parallels to a similar move in 2019, when the state claimed nearly 100,000 registered voters were non-citizens – before retracting that statement after discovering that many of them naturalized citizens.
“Here we have the same thing again,” said State Representative Gene Wu. “We are here because the state of Texas under Governor Abbott has a long history of preventing people he doesn’t like from voting.”
Wu and other Democratic state representatives broke the quorum in 2021 to block Senate Bill 1. The Election law finally passed and was enacted into law. It increased penalties for election-related crimes and cracked down on initiatives to make voting easier, including in Harris County, where authorities expanded voting options to include drive-in voting.
“For us, this fight is not about Democrats, Republicans or politics,” Wu said. “This fight is about America. It’s about the America we believe in. It’s about the democracy that our friends, families and loved ones fought and died for.”
In addition to Abbott’s claim to be cracking down on illegal voting, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced a series of raids last week in Frio, Atascosa and Bexar counties as part of an “ongoing election integrity investigation” that has not yet resulted in any charges. His office also set up a “Hotline for information on illegal voting” this week.
“Nothing is more important than the integrity of our elections,” Paxton said in a press release announcing the hotline’s launch. “That means protecting every legal vote from unlawful attempts to tamper with the outcome of our elections.”
The raids targeted several Latino households in South Texasincluding an 87-year-old member of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC).
“Don’t intimidate our community,” said Sergio Lira, president of Greater Houston LULAC. “Don’t go after the abuelitas when nine police officers are knocking on their doors at nine in the morning.”
Voters can check their registration status on the Foreign Minister’s websiteTo vote in the November general election, Texans must register by October 7.
