Still the only voter ID anyone should need
A federal judge ruled this week that the state is violating U.S. law by refusing to release its list of more than 11,000 registered voters that it identified as potential noncitizens, and ordered the release of the data within 14 days.
A coalition of civil rights groups sued the Secretary of State’s Office in February for withholding the data concerning a voter purge program targeting immigrants that was mandated by a new Republican-backed election law.
The new elections law, passed after a heated partisan battle last summer, requires that the office conduct regular sweeps of the voter rolls to verify citizenship status by cross-checking data provided by the Texas Department of Public of Safety.
The groups are concerned that thousands of immigrants could have their voter registrations canceled based on outdated or incorrect records, a potential repeat of a botched voter purge in 2019 that ended with a court settlement restricting who could be targeted in future purges.
The state had attempted to cancel registrations of almost 100,000 registered voters, but many were later found to be naturalized citizens or others who had been flagged in error. About 70,000 immigrants are naturalized in Texas each year on average and become eligible to vote.
Without the data on the purge initiated earlier this year, the groups say they can’t confirm that the state is complying with the 2019 settlement agreement. Within months of the new program’s launch, county officials warned the state that the lists included people who registered to vote at their naturalization ceremonies.
“We’ve kind of seen this movie before in 2019,” said Danielle Lang, senior director for voting rights at the Campaign Legal Center, which represented the civil rights groups. “Unfortunately, anecdotal evidence suggests the same thing is happening despite Texas’ claims that it’s following 2019 settlement agreement. We’re glad to finally be able to get access to the data, so the public can better understand what this process looks like and why eligible citizens are being caught up in the system.”
See here for the background. The Secretary of State has amply demonstrated that it cannot be trusted in matters like this. They need to be watched like a hawk, and that means they need to be completely transparent about every step they take. As with the other voter registration case we heard about this week (*), the Fifth Circuit is a threat, but maybe not as bog a threat in this one. The state could accept the ruling and provide the data – surely they want to show they have nothing to hide, right? – but I’m not that naive. We’ll see what they do next.
(*) As it happens, the judge for both of these cases is Lee Yeakel, a George W. Bush appointee. He has had himself a busy week.
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