Editor's note: This story has been updated with additional information from the Texas Secretary of State's office.
Monday is the last day for Texans to register to vote in the November election, which means procrastinators will likely cause the state’s voter rolls to grow by the thousands as the clock ticks down toward midnight.
At the same time, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is hoping the federal government will help him identify noncitizens so that he can stop them from voting.
Paxton sent a letter on Monday to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services requesting the federal government confirm the citizenship status of more than 450,000 of Texas’ registered voters.
That group is made up of people that did not use a state-issued driver's license or ID card when they registered to vote (The state does allow voters without a state ID to register with alternate identification).
“When Texans register to vote, they must provide a driver license number or a Social Security number. When an individual registers to vote with just a SSN, the state verifies that the SSN is authentic,” said Alicia Pierce, a spokesperson with the Texas Secretary of State.
Paxton’s move comes on the heels of a request to Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson that her office provide a list of these voters. The AG gave Nelson a deadline of last Friday to provide the list.
What Paxton will do if the federal government is unable to confirm the citizenship status of some of the voters on that list is unclear. Under federal law, the state can no longer remove people from the voter rolls because it is less than 90 days before a federal election.
This is Paxton’s latest attempt to find ineligible voters, with an emphasis on noncitizens — a common focus amongst Republican leaders across the country this year.
Bethany Albertson, a political scientist at UT Austin, recently told The Texas Newsroom that “talk around voter fraud doesn’t match the reality.”
“When politicians push messages suggesting that voter fraud is rampant,” she said, “it sows distrust in elections.”
The Brennan Center for Justice researched claims of illegal voting from politicians during the 2012, 2016 and 2020 elections. That study found that most allegations of fraud were baseless or due to clerical errors and other forms of election misconduct.