Texas Officials Targeting Naturalized Citizens in Disenfranchisement Plot

SamFisher · Feb 5, 2019

This is autocracy, not democracy. What happened to self-reliance and independence all that Texan bullshit we learned in 7th grade?

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/02/texas-republicans-racist-illegal-voters-purge.html

Texas’ voter fraud pandemonium is actually a combination of Kobach’s two favorite moves: creating dubious lists of allegedly fraudulent voters to disenfranchise, and forcing people to prove citizenship in order to cast a ballot. Whitley’s purge list was created using a profoundly flawed method: His office identified individuals who presented documents indicating that they were not citizens when obtaining or renewing driver’s licenses, using Department of Public Safety records dating back to 1996. It then cross-referenced this list with voter rolls to come up with the numbers Paxton quoted—95,000 aliens registered to vote, 58,000 of whom have cast a ballot.

This methodology has a massive flaw: More than 50,000 Texas residents are naturalized each year, and when they become citizens, they are not obligated to inform the Department of Public Safety. It is therefore extremely likely that many if not all of the individuals whom Whitley flagged have become U.S. citizens and are perfectly lawful Texas voters. Driver’s licenses issued to non-citizens are valid for six years, and over the last six years, nearly 350,000 Texas adults have been naturalized. If even one-third of those adults registered to vote, they could easily account for the total number of “non-citizen” voter registrants on Whitley’s list.

Whitley’s purge list was created using a profoundly flawed method.
Despite this obvious defect, Whitley has pushed ahead with the purge. Even after warning election officials that the list might be faulty, he has not retracted it, leaving counties to implement a purge known to target naturalized citizens. Even worse, he has pressed ahead with a plan to create a new list of alleged non-citizen voters every month, directing voter registrars to “take action” upon receiving each new batch of names. Election officials will send a single notice to these voters informing them that they are set to be removed from the rolls. If they do not provide a birth certificate, passport, or certificate of naturalization proving U.S. citizenship within 30 days, they will be purged.

Properly understood, then, Paxton and Whitley are not purging non-citizen voters; they are purging naturalized voters who have a fundamental right to participate in elections like any other citizen. Why? One possibility, noted in a lawsuit filed by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund on Saturday, is that 51.7 percent of naturalized U.S. citizens in Texas are Latino, while 28.8 percent are Asian. In the 2018 midterm election, Texas Latinos more than doubled their turnout compared to the 2014 midterms, casting 19.1 percent of all votes. MALDEF argues that the purge “will disproportionately and negatively affect Latinos,” since “the Latino population in Texas has a higher ratio of naturalized citizens to native-born citizens.”
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NewRoxFan · Feb 8, 2019

Deckard · Feb 8, 2019

The ******* should be going to jail. This is outrageous. It's not something I'm unaware of, though. How can it possibly be defended? Has this made it to the courts?

joshuaao · Feb 8, 2019

SamFisher said: ↑

This is autocracy, not democracy. What happened to self-reliance and independence all that Texan bullshit we learned in 7th grade?
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NewRoxFan said: ↑

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Embarrassing

glynch · Feb 9, 2019

I do get some consolation in watching the poor Repugs keep doubling down on racism and xenophobia. When Texas flips it will flip hard and like California it will take at least a generation or two for the Repugs to outlive this. Only so many racist scared whites to get out to vote.

NewRoxFan · Feb 21, 2019

The Texas Secretary of State that oversaw the fraudulent claim about non-citizen voters? May soon be out of a job...

Texas secretary of state apologized for inaccurate claim of 95,000 non-citizen voters that Trump tweeted as evidence of voter fraud

David Whitley, the Texas secretary of state, apologized for a misleading claim that tens of thousands of non-citizens were registered to vote.
Last month the secretary of state's office said it was investigating the legal status of 95,000 registered voters who had provided work visas or green cards as documents when they obtained a driver's license or ID, which may suggest they were not citizens. Of these, according to the Texas Tribune, the secretary of state's office said about 58,000 individuals cast a ballot in one or more elections since 1996. Officials said the names identified are "WEAK" matches that counties may choose to investigate or not. Those figures have proven to be invalid, as outlets including the Texas Tribune found that tens of thousands of those counted were US citizens.
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President Donald Trump seized on the news, using the numbers released as evidence of massive voter fraud. "58,000 non-citizens voted in Texas, with 95,000 non-citizens registered to vote," Trump wrote. "These numbers are just the tip of the iceberg. All over the country, especially in California, voter fraud is rampant. Must be stopped. Strong voter ID!"
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https://www.businessinsider.com/texas-secretary-of-state-retracts-figures-on-illegal-voters-2019-2

NewRoxFan · May 28, 2019

See ya, wouldn't want to be ya...

Embattled Texas elections chief David Whitley resigns

The embattled Texas elections chief who questioned the U.S. citizenship of nearly 100,000 people resigned Monday ahead of being forced out of office, stepping down as Republicans went home to defend their vulnerable majority in 2020 rather than try forcing a late vote to save Gov. Greg Abbott's nominee. Secretary of State David Whitley never received a confirmation vote for his post before the Texas Legislature gaveled out for two years. It was a quiet end to an unusually mild five months in the Capitol that for a decade has been a battlefield of culture wars and bare-knuckled conservatism. Abbott publicly kept up hopes for Whitley until the end, refusing to rule out just hours before Monday's deadline that his hand-picked elections chief might hang onto his job. He said the state Senate had "fought hard" for his nominee.
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But Whitley's fate had appeared all but sealed for months. Democrats blocked a vote on his nomination after Whitley's office led a botched scouring of voter rolls in January that misidentified scores of people as non-citizens, set off questions from Congress and led to the state settling a federal lawsuit. Whitley did not address the flubbed voter search in his resignation letter to Abbott. "Working alongside the employees in the secretary of state's office, county elections officials, and representatives of our #1 trading partner, Mexico, has been my distinct honor and privilege," Whitley wrote, according to a letter obtained by local media. Democrats for months have said Whitley lost their trust and resisted appeals to reconsider.
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Texas is one of the nation's biggest recurring battlegrounds over voting rights. Those tensions reignited as Whitley's office claimed that 58,000 of the voters flagged were shown to have voted in at least one election since 1996, prompting President Donald Trump to renew unsubstantiated claims of rampant voter fraud. But the data used was deeply flawed and, within days, Whitley's office began walking back the numbers. The ensuing uproar threatened to cause another heated legislative session on the heels of passing some of the nation's toughest abortion restrictions, immigration crackdowns and a failed effort in 2017 to pass a "bathroom bill" targeting transgender people.
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Rather than waging partisan battles, a weakened GOP majority instead poured an extra $4.6 billion into classrooms and took measures to slow rising property taxes. Abbott is also expected to sign $1.6 billion in teacher raises in Texas, where teachers make about $7,000 below the national average. Republican House Speaker Dennis Bonnen said the focus will now soon turn to keeping a GOP majority. "Well, let me answer it this way, I hope so, but that wasn't why we did what we did," Bonnen said. "I think you saw an extraordinary commitment from Republicans and Democrats working in such a harmonious respectful way on these big issues. I think what it really does though is it helps every member of Texas House get re-elected."
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https://www.cbsnews.com/news/embattled-texas-elections-chief-david-whitley-resigns/

pirc1 · May 28, 2019

NewRoxFan said: ↑

See ya, wouldn't want to be ya...

Embattled Texas elections chief David Whitley resigns

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/embattled-texas-elections-chief-david-whitley-resigns/
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Is he going to join the white house?

Deckard · May 28, 2019

NewRoxFan said: ↑

See ya, wouldn't want to be ya...

Embattled Texas elections chief David Whitley resigns

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/embattled-texas-elections-chief-david-whitley-resigns/
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About f*cking time, the *******.

REEKO_HTOWN · Jun 5, 2019

Can someone roll this POS out to the curb for trash pick up?

DPS emails show Texas governor requested the voter purge that used flawed data

Two top officials at the Department of Public Safety named Gov. Greg Abbott’s office as a driving force in the state’s program to purge nearly 100,000 suspected non-U.S. citizens from Texas’ voter rolls, emails made public Tuesday show.

Abbott’s office, however, on Tuesday denied it had any contact with the agency before the launch of the effort in late January.
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https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/local/article/Emails-show-Texas-governor-requested-the-voter-13936493.php?utm_campaign=CMS Sharing Tools (Premium)&utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=referral

leroy · Jun 5, 2019

REEKO_HTOWN said: ↑

Can someone roll this POS out to the curb for trash pick up?

DPS emails show Texas governor requested the voter purge that used flawed data

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/local/article/Emails-show-Texas-governor-requested-the-voter-13936493.php?utm_campaign=CMS Sharing Tools (Premium)&utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=referral
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Problem is, those of us that use logic and have a sense of fairness are simply outnumbered in this state. Those that voted for him are the ones that think this was worth it despite the illegality and blatant racism.

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Texas Officials Targeting Naturalized Citizens in Disenfranchisement Plot

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Texas Officials Targeting Naturalized Citizens in Disenfranchisement Plot

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