We can agree that government suffers from a disease of inaction. Even with the best of intentions, important projects simply die in government, especially those that are political hot potatoes – like election integrity. This is simply a political reality.

For nearly a year, the Texas Attorney General has had information about the problems with Texas’ voter rolls, and this project has simply stalled. In January, in discussions with multiple senior level staffers in the AG’s office, I predicted they would get nowhere by mid-year in 2018 and promised that – if they did nothing – I would go public in July or August. As I had originally feared, the project has stalled. Last week I followed through on my promise to release the information.

It is important for us to remember that we aren’t talking about stalling on a minor issue. Since my discussions with high level Texas AG staffers about non-citizens being registered to vote in Texas, the March 2018 Primary Election happened. The May 22 Primary runoff election happened, and the May 2018 local municipal, school board, and bond elections took place, not to mention other local runoffs and special elections. Now, in just a few months, we’ll have the November 2018 General Election. How does this not rise to the level of a priority as election after election goes by?

In 2017, government analysts compared Texas’ voter rolls against the Department of Public Safety (DPS) database. Most Texans don’t realize the Secretary of State (SoS) checks the DPS database every time they register a voter. This is done in accordance with federal statute.

They verify the applicant’s name, address, and date of birth. DPS has citizenship information, but the SoS does NOT verify that status, even though it is illegal for non-citizens to vote!

In checking the voter rolls against the DPS citizenship status, the analysts found 280,000 registered voters who – at the time they were issued a DPS ID – were not citizens. Again, non- citizens are illegible to register and to vote.

Some of these were registered to vote when they got their ID (motor voter), and some were registered to vote at a later date. Some of these likely became naturalized citizens since they obtained their DPS ID, but surely not all of them. The fact is – we simply do not know.

Texans deserve to know.

There are over 21.5 million DPS-issued IDs in Texas. There are 14 million registered voters. Of the 14 million registered voters, more than 4 million of them do not match up to anyone in DPS’s database or other databases available to the analysts.

Who could these people be? They could be people who have moved out of state. They could be voters who are since deceased. Even though counties are supposed to remove deceased citizens from the rolls, we have seen that counties simply do not routinely do that. They could also be the rare person who votes but has no form of government ID.

There are other reasons someone might be improperly registered to vote, but do not appear in DPS database. The most obvious reason that comes to mind is that they could be illegal aliens.

The problem with both the 4 million pool and the 280,000 pool is the state has so far been unable or unwilling to give Texans an answer regarding who these people are, or what their citizenship status was when they voted and registered. Also, no one can tell you what their status is today.