
Votebeat: Abbott says a million names have been deleted from Texas voter rolls. What does that number mean?
Julian Salinas II and Natalia Contreras of Votebeat report on the removal of a million names from Texas voter rolls.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced on Monday that the state has removed roughly a million people from its voter rolls since he signed a legislative overhaul of election laws in 2021.
“Illegal voting in Texas will never be tolerated. We will continue to actively safeguard Texans’ sacred right to vote while also aggressively protecting our elections from illegal voting,” he said.
However, election experts point out that both federal and state law already required voter roll maintenance, and the governor’s framing of this routine process as a protection against illegal voting could be used to undermine trust in elections. The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 already governs how states should keep their registration rolls accurate and up-to-date, and also includes protections to avoid the inadvertent removal of properly registered voters.