Updated at 5:20 p.m.: Revised to include new information throughout

AUSTIN — The Texas secretary of state's office sent counties new guidance Friday on how to investigate whether tens of thousands of noncitizens voted. The email to elections administrators came a week after the original call for an investigation, which caused confusion among local officials and criticism that the state was trying to purge legal citizens from voter rolls.

"The data we provide to you is the starting point, and your data matches should be reviewed before you send out any notices of examination," Keith Ingram, the secretary of state's director of the elections division, said in an email obtained by The Dallas Morning News. "We are working with [the Texas Department of Public Safety] as part of our ongoing collaboration between the state and the counties to provide additional information to assist you in making your determinations."

In its updated guidance, the secretary of state's office told local counties to review its application files for ways to verify a person's citizenship. Repeating information the state had given to individual counties earlier by phone, Ingram said voter registration applications processed through the Department of Public Safety indicated whether a person's citizenship was verified.

Ingram said that some counties maintained lists of voter registration applications processed at naturalization ceremonies, which they should reference to verify a person's citizenship. Those applications, like the ones processed by the Department of Public Safety, could be identified by a code that voter registrars use.

Ingram also told counties to "look to other entities that may have verified citizenship."

"The voter registrar has the right to use any lawful means to investigate whether a registered voter is currently eligible for registration in the county," he wrote. "There are other governmental entities in or around your county that may have verified citizenship. Several counties have informed us that they are reaching out to local immigration offices to determine whether or not they can obtain lists from these sources."

Guidance or best practices?

To some local election officials, however, the updated guidance wasn't helpful.

"The Secretary Of State's latest guidance reiterated information we elections administrators and voter registrars had already communicated between ourselves. It read more like a best-practice list than a guidance," said Remi Garza, the Cameron County elections administrator who serves as secretary of the Texas Association of Elections Administrators. "They didn't appear to guide us more than they were telling us how our counterparts were addressing the issue. As a group we are already incorporating these practices into our approaches."

Garza added that election administrators would have liked a proven approach instead of the state saying that counties could do anything from doing nothing to requiring people on the list to prove their citizenship.

"If they could have provided pre-identified resources we could have moved with greater certainty, he said. Instead each of the 254 counties is struggling to ‎adapt instead of having consistency across the state."

Travis County voter registrar Bruce Elfant shared those concerns, adding that the new guidance did not provide him with new ways to verify a person's citizenship.

"[There's] nothing new to us that we didn't know," he said. "We've been doing everything that's in that advisory already."

For counties that have already sent out notices asking people to verify their citizenship, the secretary of state's updated guidance provided no new information on how to proceed. Those counties may be exposed to legal jeopardy since some have sent notices to people that were later determined by the state to have verified their citizenship.

Officials in Galveston County sent 92 such notices to people on Monday only to learn on Tuesday that 62 of those had already proven their citizenship to the state, according to The Texas Tribune.

State asked to rescind advisory

Civil rights groups and Democratic lawmakers have been calling for the state to rescind last Friday's advisory by Secretary of State David Whitley that about 95,000 people who received driver's licenses -- while legally in the country, but not U.S. citizens -- also appeared on Texas voter rolls. Whitley's office asked Texas counties to investigate the 58,000 people included in that list that also appeared to have voted in one or more elections between 1996 and 2018.

By early this week, those numbers had started to dwindle. On Wednesday, counties across Texas had removed at least 20,000 people from the lists the state had provided, after state officials told local election administrators those people had already verified their citizenship through the Department of Public Safety. Many local officials said they could not continue with the investigation until the secretary of state's office sent --in writing -- new data and revised guidance on how to proceed.

Civil rights groups and Democrats told local officials they did not have to comply with the state’s request until they were provided more information. They also called on the secretary of state to issue written guidance for counties.

The criticism didn't come solely from Democrats. Former Secretary of State Carlos Cascos, a Republican who served in the role from January 2015 to January 2017, also said the advisory should be rescinded.

"I think they need to rescind it, do due diligence and make a more accurate list," Cascos told Texas Monthly.

Cascos said the state has an obligation to maintain the integrity of voter rolls but that state officials "kind of blew it" by making the issue political.

"Sending the list to the attorney general's office gives the appearance that they are ready to prosecute 58,000 people," Cascos said. "What they probably should have done is waited until they verified the information."

Purpose of list

The new guidance did not include an admission of error from the secretary of state’s office.

“The purpose of today’s advisory was to provide additional guidance to Texas counties in conducting their list maintenance activities -- specifically, that they may have access to information in determining a registered voter’s eligibility that we do not maintain at the state level,” said Sam Taylor, a spokesman from the secretary of state’s office.

“As we’ve stated from the beginning, county voter registrars may use any lawful means to determine whether or not a registered voter is eligible, and today’s guidance provides several examples of resources at the local level that may be available to them to do so,” he said.

Beth Stevens, voting rights legal director of the Texas Civil Rights Project, blasted the new instructions from state officials. She renewed calls for the Secretary of State to scrap the list altogether and accused his office of trying to hide information from the public.

"Instead of addressing the issue and rescinding his advisory, the Secretary of State's office is now digging its heels even deeper with this updated notice," she said in a written statement. "It is alarming that the Secretary's office is encouraging county officials to reach out to federal immigration authorities which may stoke additional fear in this already fraught process."

Dallas County Elections Administrator Toni Pippins-Poole couldn’t be immediately reached for comment. Earlier this week, she said she was waiting on guidance from the Dallas County district attorney’s office on how to proceed, though a voter database vendor had already identified 1,715 eligible voters in the county’s list of 9,938 names.

Dallas County officials are expected to discuss the Secretary of State advisory behind closed doors at a meeting Tuesday.

James Barragán reported from Austin. Julieta Chiquillo reported from Dallas.