Gov. Greg Abbott (R-Texas) announced on Monday that the state has removed over one million voters from the state’s voter rolls in an effort to preserve the integrity of elections and take action against illegal voting. The individuals removed include non-citizens, deceased voters, and criminals with felony convictions.
In a Monday press release, Abbott said, “Election integrity is essential to our democracy. I have signed the strongest election laws in the nation to protect the right to vote and to crack down on illegal voting. These reforms have led to the removal of over one million ineligible people from our voter rolls in the last three years, including noncitizens, deceased voters, and people who moved to another state.”
The press release noted that Abbott signed Senate Bill 5 in 2017, which increased penalties for election workers who knowingly allow non-citizens and ineligible individuals to vote. In 2021, Abbott signed Senate Bill 1, Senate Bill 1113, and House Bill 574.
Senate Bill 1 criminalized ballot harvesting, made lying during voter registration a state jail felony, banned the distribution of unsolicited mail-in ballots, required identification for mail-in ballots, and required the secretary of state to conduct election audits every two years.
Senate Bill 1113 enabled the secretary of state to withhold funds from Texas counties that do not remove non-citizens from voter rolls, while House Bill 574 made knowingly counting invalid votes or refusing to count valid votes a second-degree felony.
READ MORE: GOP state investigates reports of non-citizens illegally registering to vote
In Monday’s press release, Abbott explained that the secretary of state and county voter registrars “have an ongoing legal requirement to review the voter rolls, remove ineligible voters, and refer any potential illegal voting to the Attorney General’s Office and local authorities for investigation and prosecution.”
The Republican governor warned that Texas will not tolerate “illegal voting” and reaffirmed that the state will “actively safeguard Texans’ sacred right to vote while also aggressively protecting our elections from illegal voting.”
In a statement obtained by Fox 7, Abbott said that the laws he signed in 2021 have “enhanced” the state’s ability to review “non-citizens who may be able to vote.”
The governor’s press release noted that out of the over 1.1 million voters who were purged from the state’s voter rolls, roughly 6,500 were non-citizens, over 6,000 had felony convictions, and over 457,000 voters were deceased.
“That obviously is a number higher than what we want to see, we want to see zero,” Abbott added in a statement to Fox 7. “I don’t care what your color is — black, white, brown, asian — I think everybody wants to see fair elections with the rules followed with no illegal voting.”
