Pennsylvania state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe called on the state Wednesday to immediately purge 11,198 noncitizen voters who were confirmed as registered to vote despite not being eligible, reports the Washington Times.

Photo: The Patriot Post

State Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, a Republican and former chairman of a House government oversight panel, said the administration of Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, belatedly acknowledged the large number of noncitizens in communications over the past two months. “I believe that we need to take action and have those people removed immediately from the rolls,” Mr. Metcalfe told The Washington Times. “They were never eligible to vote.” -Washington Times

Metcalfe and Wolf sparred over the data after Metcalfe made a right-to-know request under state law which the Wolf administration objected to - going to court to try and keep it hidden from the public. The state Commonwealth Court appellate panel scheduled a hearing last month to address the issue, however one week before the hearing the Wolf administration withdrew their appeal and announced that they would turn over the information.

Metcalfe questioned the Wolf administration's timing.

"This governor has been an obstructionist in revealing this information to the citizens, and thereby I believe a participant in allowing this fraudulent activity to occur because it benefits him and his party," he said.

Days earlier, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's office announced that the Texas Department of Public Safety identified nearly 100,000 noncitizens on the state's voter rolls, according to NBCDFW.

Texas officials arrived at their conclusion after comparing state driver's license records - which note immigration status - with voter rolls, and found that 95,000 people registered as noncitizens were among the 16 million registered to vote in the state.

Of the 95,000 - around 58,000 had voted at some point since 1996.

Pennsylvania officials arrived at their figures in a somewhat similar process - admitting that a glitch in the state DMV computers allowed noncitizens to register to vote.

The state did not release the names to Mr. Metcalfe or to Rep. Garth Everett, a Republican and chairman of the House State Government Committee, so they weren’t able to figure out how many had cast ballots. Contacted by The Washington Times, the Pennsylvania Department of State did not provide a comment on its numbers. Voter integrity advocates said the findings undermine arguments that there is no problem. -Washington Times

"Demonstrating, much less discussing, noncitizen voting activity is the worst form of heresy one can commit for left-wing groups," said Public Interest Legal Foundation director Logan Churchwell, whose group is involved in Texas and Pennsylvania lawsuits to obtain voter data.

Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton told the Times that these reports are "the tip of the iceberg," adding "This shows the urgent need for citizenship verification for voting. The Department of Justice should follow up with a national investigation."

There is currently no requirement to prove citizenship to vote in any state, and efforts to change that have failed. Last year, a US District Court Judge struck down a law spearheaded by former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach which would require citizenship documentation. The ruling was appealed to the 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals.

That said, Texas will begin implementing certain verification steps on the back-end. Each month the secretary of state will compare new voter registrations with federal immigration records at the Department of Homeland Security.

"This carries the benefit of being a report plus a reform," said Churchwell. "This wasn’t a one-off research project. Texas will be actively screening for existing potential noncitizen registrants on a monthly basis, which is something we’ve long pushed for."

Liberal groups have challenged the findings - suggesting that the DMV information could be out of date.

A coalition of 13 liberal groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, has challenged Mr. Whitley’s methodology and called his findings suspect. They said that since driver’s licenses are issued every six years in Texas, the person could have become a citizen after the immigration status was submitted to the Department of Public Safety. The League of United Latin American Citizens says in its lawsuit that more than 50,000 Texans are naturalized each year and that most of them vote in their first election. To account for that, Mr. Whitley created a process for election boards to notify each of the 95,000 names and ask them to verify whether they are citizens and should remain on the rolls. In Pennsylvania, the state’s Democrat-led administration has been less enthusiastic about confronting the issue. -Washington Times

President Trump sparked a national debate after he claimed in 2017 that "millions and millions" of people voted illegally. A presidential commission was assembled to investigate, however it was disbanded after uncooperative states refused to hand over voter data and administrative issues.