Originally at KERA | By Julián Aguilar | The Texas Newsroom
Data compiled by the conservative Heritage Foundation shows that noncitizen voting in Texas isn’t a widespread problem and instead shows other instances of voter fraud committed by U.S. citizens are more prevalent.
Since 2017, The Heritage Foundation has maintained a database on fraudulent voting with a mission, in part, to “demonstrate the vulnerabilities in the election system and the many ways in which fraud is committed.” Its Texas data dates to 2005.
The think tank, most known for being the architect of the controversial policy blueprint known as Project 2025, divides voting infractions into nine categories. Those include “ineligible voting,” which is defined as: “Illegal registration and voting by individuals who are not U.S. citizens, are convicted felons, or are otherwise not eligible to vote.”
It states on its website that the data is not an exhaustive record, but instead “intended to demonstrate the vulnerabilities in the election system and the many ways in which fraud is committed.”
In its database, The Heritage Foundation has included only three instances of noncitizens casting ballots in Texas since 2012. They include:
- A Mexican citizen who used her cousin’s identity to vote in several elections, including the 2016 presidential election. She eventually pleaded guilty to two felony charges and was ordered to spend 180 days in jail, according to the database.
- The 2018 case of a Salvadoran man who had been in the United States since the 1980s who was indicted for falsifying documents to obtain a passport and register to vote. He later pleaded guilty to making a false statement in his passport application.
- A Grand Prairie woman who was in the country legally but not a citizen was granted parole in 2019 after spending nine months in prison for unauthorized voting. Reports indicate she voted in 2012 and in the GOP primary runoff in 2014.
- The database cites a fourth example from Texas, but it appears to be out of Austin, Minn., not Texas’ capital city.
The foundation’s data also suggests that a more pressing issue is felons casting ballots. Its analysis cites at least four times as many instances of that type of fraud when compared with noncitizen voting.
The Heritage Foundation is one of the loudest voices sounding alarm bells about noncitizen voting heading into the November General Election – a call recently taken up by Republican leaders in several states, including Texas.
When asked by The Texas Newsroom why the database contains so few examples of noncitizen voting in Texas, along with how the think tank selects which cases to highlight, the Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky and Edwin Meese III said the data “does not capture all cases and certainly does not capture reported instances or allegations of election fraud, some of which may be meritorious, some not, that are not investigated or prosecuted.”
“Moreover, some public officials appear to be unconcerned with election fraud and fail to pursue cases that are reported to them. It is a general truism that you don’t find what you don’t look for,” they said in an email.
The pair also pointed to an article in the Daily Signal, a conservative media outlet, that cited numerous allegations of voter rolls containing noncitizens in states around the country. The article, however, didn’t include any Texas statistics or examples.
A focus on noncitizens from Texas Republicans
The issue of noncitizen voting has been amplified in Texas in the waning weeks of summer and as the October 7 deadline to register to vote approaches.
In late August, Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement that more than 1.1 million names have been removed from Texas’ voter rolls since 2021. Though Abbott listed noncitizens first when describing the categories of voters removed, noncitizens accounted for some 6,500 of the removals – about a half percent of the total number. He added that of those, about 1,930 have a voting history and those cases have been referred to the office of the Texas Attorney General for further investigation.
Meese and von Spakovsky said they doubted if any of those cases would later be included in their database and blamed the Department of Justice.
“Has the U.S. Justice Department contacted Texas to ask for the files and voter registration and voter history record on each alien removed?” they responded by email. “I have no doubt the answer is ‘no’ and that there will be no such inquiry by DOJ, so these 6,500 cases will never be added to our database.”’
When asked for an update on the referrals, the governor’s office deferred to the Texas Secretary of State, where a spokesperson said the office doesn’t comment on pending investigations. The attorney general’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
The American Immigration Council, a Washington-based think tank, cited the Heritage Foundation’s own data as proof that noncitizen voting isn’t a widespread problem and said most of the infractions stemmed from legal immigrants being confused about the process, as was the case in one of the foundation’s Texas examples.
“The lessons to take from Heritage’s own database are that noncitizen voting is not a serious problem and that to the extent rare cases occur, they would be best addressed by better training government workers to recognize immigration documents and follow procedure,” wrote Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the council.
“The majority of the proven cases in the Heritage database would never have happened but for government workers making mistakes,” he said.
Texas has its own laws to combat voter fraud. Are they working?
While the Heritage Foundation insinuates that federal officials are hesitant to prosecute voter fraud, Gov. Abbott has boasted about the state’s own efforts to combat the issue.
In his announcement last month, he cited recent state laws intended to bolster election integrity that include Senate Bill 1, which he signed in 2021 and which the Heritage Foundation cheered as a common-sense solution. The legislation makes giving false statements while registering to vote a state jail felony, outlaws ballot harvesting, and requires the Secretary of State to conduct random audits of elections.
Abbott also touted SB 1113, which allows the Secretary of State to withhold funds from counties that don’t remove noncitizens from their voter roll.
The Heritage Foundation didn’t respond when asked if its database includes instances of people who were prosecuted by the state of Texas under these charges or if it knows of counties whose funds were withheld by the Texas Secretary of State.
In a statement last month, Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson addressed the issue and said the office does routine checks of the state’s voter rolls by comparing Texas Department of Public Safety data with information on voter registration lists.
“The Secretary’s Office also receives information from Texas courts about people who have been excused or disqualified from jury duty because of noncitizenship. The Secretary of State uses this data to identify potential noncitizens and sends these records to county voter registrars to investigate the voter’s eligibility,” the statement notes. “Those who are determined to be ineligible or who fail to respond within the allotted time are removed from the voter roll.”
Chelsie Kramer, the Texas State Organizer with the American Immigration Council, noted that Texas Republicans seem intent on keeping the issue at the forefront even though voter-roll maintenance is a routine occurrence.
“This is a regular occurrence that happens, not only in Texas, but across the country,” she said. “And I think that’s an important part of this narrative, is that this is a regular occurrence. And so, people need to be asking themselves, why is it being made such a big deal right now?”
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