AUSTIN, Texas — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday announced that more than 1 million ineligible voters had been removed from the state's voter roll since Senate Bill 1 went into effect in 2021.
That number includes people who moved out of state, died, or were deemed to be non-citizens.
"Election integrity is essential to our democracy," Abbott said in a post on X. "I have signed the strongest election laws in the nation to protect the right to vote and crack down on illegal voting. The reforms have led to the removal of over one million ineligible people from our voter rolls in the last three years."
He went on to say the process is ongoing.
Here's a look at the people who have been removed from the voter rolls:
- Non-citizens: 6,500+
- Voters who have a felony conviction: 6,000+
- Deceased people: 457,000+
- Voters on the suspense list: 463,000+
- Voters who responded to an address confirmation notice that they had moved: 134,000+
- Voters who failed to respond to a notice of examination: 65,000+
- Voters who requested to cancel their registration: 19,000+
Abbott said that out of the 6,500+ non-citizens removed from the rolls, nearly 2,000 of them had a voter history. He said the records were being sent to the Texas Attorney General's Office for investigation.
With less than two months until the start of early voting in Harris County for the November general election, some state leaders said they're concerned about election integrity while others said they're confident with the state's systems in place.
"We want our voters ... our residents here in Texas to make sure and to understand that we have the highest standards," Rep. Mano DeAyala said.
The election director for the Secretary of State's Office reaffirmed the strength of Texas' voter rolls.
"Texas is very good at lists, maintenance activities. We have strong, clean voter rolls," Elections Director Christina Adkins said.
The Secretary of State Office said there hasn't been a recent spike in voter roll data showing non-citizen voter registrations despite some rumblings of the sort on social media.
"What I can say, as we look at that data pretty regularly to look for potential issues or anomalies, we have not seen any unusual activity. Everything has been consistent with what it has been for the last few years," Adkins said.
The state on Monday also presented findings of an audit from the 2021-2022 election cycle that included data from Harris County and the now-defunct election administrator's office. The Secretary of State Office said Harris County had improved ever since the duties now lie with the County Clerk's Office.