Updated at 5:30 p.m: Revised to include new information throughout

The Texas secretary of state’s office asked several county elections offices Tuesday to hold off on demanding proof of citizenship from people on a state list of 98,000 potential non-U.S. citizen voters because the data may be flawed.

Dallas County Elections Administrator Toni Pippins-Poole said her office got a call from a state official Tuesday asking her to not send any notices to the nearly 10,000 county voters who appear on the list. Pippins-Poole said the state official told her office that some names on the list had provided proof of citizenship to the Texas Department of Public Safety, which also facilitates voter registrations.

Remi Garza, the county elections administrator for Cameron County in the Rio Grande Valley, said the secretary of state's office gave his office information on Tuesday morning that suggested the numbers they were originally provided "may have been overstated" and that "individuals that had already provided proof of citizenship to the DPS office had been included in the original list provided to the county."

The state initially told Cameron County that about 1,500 of the nearly 1,600 names on their list had been placed there in error. The state then called Cameron County and said they had given them the wrong number, Garza said.

In all, about 300 of the names on Cameron County’s list were put there in error, Garza said.

“At this point we have asked that they recreate the report and the correct information sent,” Garza said. “It is troubling for me to proceed with a list that is this inaccurate.”

On Friday, Secretary of State David Whitley, who is the state's top elections official, announced his office was flagging about 95,000 people who had received driver licenses while not citizens and who also appear on Texas voter rolls. On Monday, he increased the number to 98,000 names, after his office issued an advisory to county officials about potential ineligible voters. Whitley's office said 58,000 of those people had cast ballots in an election between 1996 and 2018.

Critics quickly pointed out that the state data didn’t appear to account for people who had become naturalized citizens after getting or renewing their driver’s licenses with a green-card or visa. Immigrants are required to show proof that they’re in the U.S. legally to obtain a Texas driver’s license or state ID card, but they’re not mandated to update DPS on their citizenship status.

"DPS included names of voters, that have already shown proof of Citizenship, in error," Pippins-Poole told other county officials across the state Tuesday, using a list-serve group email hosted by the Texas Association of Counties.

Others who received calls from the secretary of state’s office included officials with Tarrant, Collin and Travis counties.

After reporters contacted the secretary of state's office on Tuesday, it issued a statement noting that it continues to provide information to counties to help them verify voter eligibility.

"This is to ensure that any registered voters who provided proof of citizenship at the time they registered to vote will not be required to provide proof of citizenship as part of the counties' examination," the statement reads.

The office has not specified whether it has produced a new tally of potentially ineligible voters after finding errors in its original list. It also hasn't answered questions about how people can find out if they're on the state's list, or how counties should respond to voters requesting that information.

Counties wait for state to provide information

Collin County elections administrator Bruce Sherbet said his office is in "a holding pattern" while it waits to see if the state will provide additional information.

"We got a phone call today from the state basically telling us that there were some records that were included in that file that was sent to us that wouldn't be ones that fit into the category of questionable citizenship," he said. "In particular, it was records on there that were generated through DPS when a person was getting their driver's license and also registering to vote at the same time."

Such records are called "code 64 records," Sherbet said.

Unlike his counterpart in Cameron County, Sherbet said he was not told and does not know how many of the names on Collin County's list — about 4,700 — fall into the category of being code 64.

"Here's the question," he said. "Are they going to be able to take their files and re-do them again to remove those, and then send us ones without those records on them? Or are they going to give us some other directions on processing them?"

Tarrant County Elections Administrator Heider Garcia told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that he learned from the state that nearly 20 percent of the 5,800 names flagged in his county shouldn't have been on the list. Garcia didn't return a call Tuesday.

Pippins-Poole said in an interview that she doesn’t know how many of the 9,938 Dallas County voters on the state’s list may be there in error. She said a separate, preliminary review by her office that matched names on the state list against county records showed some of those people had registered to vote at naturalization ceremonies.

Pippins-Poole said her office has not yet sent any notices to voters asking for proof of citizenship because it’s waiting for a legal opinion from the Dallas County district attorney’s office on how to proceed. She said the state official had asked that “corrective” letters be sent in case any notices had already been mailed out to those people.

Beth Stevens, an official with the Texas Civil Rights Project, criticized the state's "bad methodology" in producing the list.

"Texans expect their government to do their due diligence before releasing incorrect and faulty data that could affect tens of thousands of people," she said in a prepared statement Tuesday. "This confusion could have been avoided if the Secretary and other state officials stopped their dangerous crusade to drum up support for their voter suppression agenda. Texans expect better from their government."

Among those who celebrated Whitley's original announcement on Friday was Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who stressed that he has authority to prosecute election crimes, and promised his office would work "to solidify trust" in state elections. An email sent by Paxton's campaign Monday referenced the list produced by Whitley under the title "VOTER FRAUD ALERT."

President Donald Trump also seized on Whitley's advisory, claiming without proof that "58,000 non-citizens voted in Texas" in a Sunday tweet.

58,000 non-citizens voted in Texas, with 95,000 non-citizens registered to vote. 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! @foxandfriends — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 27, 2019

Federal lawsuit filed

On Tuesday, the League of United Latin American Citizens — or LULAC, a national advocacy group — filed a federal lawsuit against Whitley and Paxton, alleging that U.S. citizens, particularly Latinos, were being targeted as part of a "witch hunt."

"It is, in short, a plan carefully calibrated to intimidate legitimate registered voters from continuing to participate in the election process and to enlist the broader public into joining the two officials into concentrated pressure against such continued participation," the lawsuit reads.

Even if the state is revising its list, LULAC intends to push forward with the lawsuit filed in a San Antonio court, said Dallas attorney Domingo Garcia, the organization's national president.

Garcia said state officials thought "they might be able to get away" with announcing the news of potential fraudulent voters on a Friday afternoon, after state offices had closed.

"They knew, and they tried to pull a fast one on the citizens of Texas," Garcia said.

The nonpartisan Voter Participation Center, which has sought to increase voter registration among single women, minorities and young people, suggested former Democratic U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke's strong showing against incumbent GOP Sen. Ted Cruz in November's midterms has gotten state GOP leaders' attention.

"It's no coincidence that many of the same Texas voters who nearly propelled an underdog to victory in a statewide race for the first time in more than two decades are the ones whose citizenship is under scrutiny," the group said in a written statement.

The secretary of state's office said in its Friday advisory that it had been working with DPS on refining data for voter list maintenance since early March.

Staff writer Obed Manuel in Dallas contributed to this report. Julieta Chiquillo reported from Dallas; James Barragán and Robert T. Garrett reported from Austin.