UPDATE: Smith County elections office narrows down list of possible non-U.S. citizens registered to vote to 239
Published 6:15 pm Monday, February 4, 2019
- A "vote here" sign is set up at the R.B. Hubbard Center, "The Hub" Smith County Elections Office on Tuesday March 6, 2018. (Sarah A. Miller/Tyler Morning Telegraph)
The citizenship has been verified for almost a quarter of the 297 Smith County residents flagged by the state as non-U.S. citizens with a matching voter registration record.
Smith County Elections Administrator Karen Nelson said the elections office verified the records for 58 of the residents included on the original list provided by the Secretary of State’s Office before sending out letters of examination to the remaining 239 informing the voters the office had received information questioning their citizenship.
Nelson said about 10 of those 239 cases already have been resolved by people coming into the office with documentation of their citizenship.
Nelson said she believes the other cases can be resolved without the voter being canceled from the voter rolls when the voters send in or bring in their proof of citizenship, which can be a birth certificate, passport or certificate of naturalization.
The verifications began after the Texas Secretary of State’s Office released a statement on Jan. 25 saying it had discovered about 95,000 individuals identified by DPS as non-U.S. citizens who have a matching voter registration record in Texas, and about 58,000 of them voted in one or more Texas elections.
Four days later, state employees acknowledged in calls to county officials that the county-by-county lists of suspect voters improperly included people who had registered to vote at a DPS office after showing proof of citizenship, according to The Associated Press.
In some counties, that mistake meant big changes. In Harris County, it dropped the number from the original list by about 60 percent, according to The Texas Tribune. In McLennan County, all 366 people on the list had proven citizenship, according to the Waco Tribune-Herald.
Three lawsuits already have been filed against state officials since Jan. 25 alleging Texas’ actions in the voter citizenship review efforts are unconstitutional, according to The Texas Tribune.
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