We in Guadalupe County should be thankful for
Elections
Administrator Lisa Adam and her staff who are handling the
Secretary of State’s
attempt to purge voters with dedication and professionalism.
When Secretary of
State David Whitley’s office decided to send lists of 95,000
registered voters
that it hadn’t confirmed were citizens it was touted on social
media as a “voter
fraud alert”.
In Cameron County where the list contained
366 names not a
single one was found to be a non-citizen. Travis and Harris
Counties are still
working their lists which number in the thousands but so far
they’ve cleared
more than half of the people on their lists. As of this morning
the state has
revised the list, reducing it by half.
This whole effort seems to be aimed at
spreading anxiety in
two ways; first to rev up the Republican base with claims of
vast numbers of
ineligible voters and second to suppress the votes of Latino
voters to whom the
majority of names on the state’s list belong.
Gov. Greg Abbott just nominated David Whitley
to the
Secretary of State post and that nomination is currently before
a committee in
the Texas Senate. Whitley is facing tough questions about his
actions and his
understanding of the concept of voter suppression.
Several groups that work on voter
registration and
empowerment have notified the Secretary Whitley that his office
is in violation
of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) which sets
out
requirements with for the administration of voter registration
and protects
registered voters against wrongful removal from voter rolls in
Section 8. The
NVRA protects duly registered voters from improper removal by
requiring states
to “ensure that any eligible applicant is registered to vote”
and mandating
that, once the voter is on the rolls, the state “shall not
remove” that voter
except in a few limited circumstances: at the request of the
registrant; by
reason of criminal conviction or mental incapacity as provided
by state law; or
pursuant to a general program of voters list maintenance that
makes a
reasonable effort to remove voters who become ineligible due to
death or a
change in residence.
When anyone, including these naturalized
citizens on the
state's list submits a voter registration application they are
require to sign
under penalty of perjury affirming their U.S. citizenship. The
guidelines sent
with the advisory suggests removal from the voter rolls for
anyone who can’t be
readily matched to citizenship records unless they come forward
and provide
documentary proof of their citizenship. This violates the
obligation on Texas under
the NVRA to ensure that eligible applicants who submit valid
registration forms
are registered to vote and are removed only for one of the
statutorily-specified
reasons.
Failure to provide citizenship documentation
is not one of
the permissible grounds for removal of a duly registered voter.
There’s no
doubt that the state is permitted to remove non-citizens who
have somehow
become registered to vote, but the NVRA does not permit an
overbroad program
such as the one outlined in the Advisory that will inevitably
sweep in
significant numbers of eligible citizens due to the inadequacies
of the
Department of Public Safety’s database.
Numerous good government groups like the
Common Cause Texas,
of which I am chair, MOVE Texas Civic Fund, JOLT Initiative, the
League of
Women Voters of Texas, the ACLU of Texas, the Texas Civil Rights
Project, and
the NAACP of Texas have raised their voice regarding this
attempted purge. Some
are suing the Secretary of State, others are calling for his
nomination to be
denied.
Published in the Seguin Gazette - February 15, 2019
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