(Texas Scorecard) – Stopping noncitizen voting dominated discussions during a legislative committee hearing on election-related issues held just days before Texans will begin going to the polls.
Members of the Texas Senate’s State Affairs Committee heard testimony Wednesday from elections experts and election integrity advocates on ways to prevent non-U.S. citizens from registering or voting and how to identify any noncitizens on the voter rolls.
It’s a violation of both state and federal law for noncitizens to vote or register to vote.
Serious Concerns About Noncitizens Voting
“There is currently a serious concern that noncitizens will be allowed to vote in this election,” said Fran Rhodes, president of the conservative grassroots group True Texas Project. “This is a huge concern for the people. We ask that you do whatever it takes to fix it.”
While lawmakers have been discussing the problem for years, the flood of illegal aliens into the country under the Biden-Harris administration increased worries that these noncitizens would be able to obtain state-issued IDs and get registered to vote.
Recent seemingly contradictory election advisories from the Texas Secretary of State’s office added to Texans’ concern.
The advisories addressed questions from poll workers preparing for the November election about whether licenses marked “Temporary” or “Limited-Term”—which are only issued to noncitizens—should be accepted as valid voter ID.
On October 8, SOS Elections Director Christina Adkins issued an advisory stating that licenses issued to noncitizens “should not be used” but also instructing election workers to offer a “regular ballot” to registered voters who show only a noncitizen ID and still want to vote after the law is explained to them.
Three days later, Secretary of State Jane Nelson issued an amended advisory “supplementing” the previous advice. Nelson’s updated guidance directed election workers to require registered voters presenting these noncitizen IDs to show a naturalization certificate in order to receive a regular ballot.
Questions still remain about how election workers should process voters presenting noncitizen IDs and how noncitizens are able to get on the voter rolls in the first place.
The Senate committee hearing was intended to focus on future legislative solutions, but testimony illuminated some current concerns about the upcoming general election.
Processes for Identifying Noncitizens
During Wednesday’s hearing, Adkins described the procedures that her office and county voter registration officials follow to verify that applicants are eligible to vote.
“The legislature has provided very clear direction to the state and to our office on what can and can’t be done in this area,” she said. “The legislature has also provided us the tools, from a list maintenance perspective, to try to find those individuals that may be ineligible to vote and take action to remove them from our voter rolls.”
Adkins said the most useful tool for identifying noncitizens is a data-sharing program with the Texas Department of Public Safety, which collects proof of U.S. citizenship or lawful presence from every person issued a license or ID.
The list maintenance process was codified in 2021 as part of a comprehensive election integrity measure known as Senate Bill 1 and is consistent with a settlement agreement between the SOS and LULAC, which sued in 2019 following Texas’ initial comparison of the state’s voter rolls and DPS’s noncitizen data.
“In SB 1, the legislature gave us very clear parameters and a very clear process for which we can obtain information from DPS to use for this purpose,” said Adkins.
How this process works is we receive information from DPS on a weekly basis of individuals that go into DPS and provide evidence that they are lawfully present in the United States but not a U.S. citizen. That information is compared to our database to see if there’s anybody on there that was registered prior to that transaction date that they had with DPS. Because we get this information on a weekly basis, that data is very fresh and very actionable.
“This information is then provided to our counties for investigation,” she added.
Adkins explained that the state cancels the registrations of certain inactive and deceased voters, but it’s the responsibility of county elections officials to investigate and remove other ineligible people from the voter rolls—including noncitizens.
County officials notify suspected noncitizens that they need to provide proof of citizenship to remain on the voter rolls. If they don’t respond, their registration is canceled.
Adkins clarified that most of the recently reported 6,500 registered voters identified as potential noncitizens from 2021 through mid-2024 using the DPS process were removed for failing to respond to a notice, while 581 were known to have confirmed as noncitizens.
Aside from DPS data, election officials rely on self-reporting by registered voters who claim an exemption to jury duty because they are not citizens.
For those not flagged by DPS or jury recusals, the state’s voter registration system remains an honor system reliant on applicants to check a box attesting “YES” they are a citizen.
In the past, applicants who checked the “NO” box have been added to the voter rolls.
State Sen. Judith Zaffirini (D-Laredo) asked Adkins how a noncitizen can get registered, given the safeguards in place.
Adkins responded that about 85 percent of voter registration applications come from DPS, which is required to offer its customers registration forms under the “Motor Voter” provision of the National Voter Registration Act.
“We know their citizenship has been verified,” she said.
According to Adkins, the other 15 percent of registrants submit paper forms. About 10 percent provide a driver’s license number, and the other 5 percent use the last four digits of their social security number.
“Under current Texas law, we have to validate that those individuals that submit a paper application form, that they are a live person that exists, that it’s a real number associated with a real person, and that they’re not deceased,” she explained. “But there isn’t a requirement or statutory authority right now under Texas law to also independently verify citizenship.”
“So if somebody uses a paper application form, we can’t validate that for citizenship purposes,” she concluded.
DPS Noncitizen Licenses and Data
Sherry Gibson, chief of the Texas DPS Driver License Division, testified that her office is only authorized to issue driver’s licenses and IDs to applicants who show proof of U.S. citizenship or lawful presence in the U.S.
Gibson emphasized that the DPS system does not offer voter registration forms to noncitizens, even if applicants check that they want to register.
“What about asylum-seekers at the border issued notices to appear in court?” asked State Sen. Bryan Hughes (R-Mineola), who chairs the State Affairs Committee.
“Until they show up in court, they are not lawfully present and aren’t eligible to receive a driver license,” Gibson replied.
While Gibson confirmed that licenses and IDs are not issued to illegal aliens, allaying one worry of Texans regarding noncitizen voting, fresh concerns arose over DPS-issued IDs.
Neither driver licenses issued to legal permanent residents nor handgun licenses issued to noncitizens are marked to indicate that the holder is not a U.S. citizen and therefore not eligible to vote. However, both are accepted forms of voter ID in Texas.
Gibson also confirmed the data-sharing process between DPS and SOS, noting that voter registration applications are sent daily as are files of noncitizens who update their citizenship status with DPS. The agency also sends the SOS weekly lists of noncitizen transactions.
Adkins again stated that her office matches the noncitizen data from DPS against the voter rolls in their system, and anyone who registered to vote prior to the date they identified to DPS as a noncitizen is passed on to county registrars, who then must investigate.
Federal Noncitizen Data
Texas and other states have looked to the federal government for help identifying noncitizens but with little success.
Former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli testified to senators about the challenges of verifying voters’ citizenship using the two available federal databases: Social Security and SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements).
He said the SAVE database is “not particularly well designed,” not easy to use, and requires a fee, while the Social Security data is unreliable because citizens are not required to get a social security number and noncitizens can legitimately get numbers.
“There is no database of who’s a citizen,” he added.
Cuccinelli said Arizona’s system of maintaining two sets of voter rolls—one for verified citizens who can vote in all races and one for unverified voters allowed to vote in federal-only elections—“is the only route that is in existence successfully today, and it does work very well because most people want to vote in all the elections.”
“Stopping noncitizen voting should not be a partisan issue,” Honest Elections Project Executive Director Jason Snead told senators. “It is extremely popular with the American public, and every Texas voter deserves to know that this state’s elections, as well as our nation’s elections generally, are decided by American citizens.”
Solutions to Stop Noncitizen Voting
Several witnesses at Wednesday’s hearing offered possible solutions for stopping noncitizen voting.
Most listed requiring proof of citizenship with voter applications as a top priority.
Greg Blackie, deputy director of policy for the Arizona Free Enterprise Club, asserted that “all 50 states can be requiring proof of citizenship to vote” as Arizona currently does.
They could pass laws requiring proof of citizenship on your own state voter registration forms. You can reject state voter registration forms without proof of citizenship. You can do investigations for federal form applicants before you register them to vote. And we believe you can limit them by saying you cannot vote by mail and you cannot vote for president or state elections. That’s the framework that we would hope other states would follow until Congress acts to help protect our elections from noncitizens voting.
Bill Sargent, a former Galveston County election official, said Texas could implement an Arizona-style solution without needing two voter lists. He said a single list could code voters by whether they are verified as citizens, and voting precincts could be programmed with a regular ballot and a federal-only ballot.
“We need to ensure that every person who is voting is a U.S. citizen and every U.S. citizen can vote,” added Sargent.
Andrew Eller, vice chair of State Republican Executive Committee’s Election Integrity Committee, also advocated for visibly marking all DPS licenses issued to any category of noncitizens and amending the state’s voter ID law to specifically exclude licenses marked to indicate the holder is not a citizen.
Deputy Attorney General Josh Reno told the committee that the only “simple fix to the problem at hand” is for Congress to pass the SAVE Act, which requires people to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote.
A few people spoke against any additional legislation aimed at stopping noncitizen voting.
Representatives of the ACLU, Common Cause, and the Texas Civil Rights Project told senators that current criminal penalties—including the threat of deportation—are sufficient to deter any illegal voting by noncitizens.
Years of Working to Fix Noncitizen Voting
Legislators have been debating how to fix the problem of noncitizens registering and voting in Texas elections for years.
In February 2018, the Texas attorney general’s office reported to lawmakers that noncitizen voting was a “significant” problem due to a “lack of safeguards in the system to detect ineligible voters, like noncitizens.” A survey of just four counties had found that over a two-year period, 165 noncitizens had cast 100 illegal votes.
During a Senate committee hearing that same month chaired by Hughes, an attorney with the AG’s office told senators that illegal voting by noncitizens was a growing concern because no documented proof of citizenship was required to register to vote and no state agency was overseeing county voter registration officials to make sure they maintain accurate voter rolls.
Then-District Attorney Omar Escobar testified about discovering noncitizens on the voter rolls during a voter fraud investigation, telling senators “That non-citizens are registered to vote is beyond question. That non-citizens are voting in Starr County is also beyond question.”
“This isn’t a question about the existence of alien voting—but the scale,” said election expert J. Christian Adams, head of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a law firm that sued several Texas counties to disclose their data about noncitizens registering and voting.
Texas Scorecard reported in August 2018 that more than 280,000 suspected noncitizens were registered to vote in Texas, and another four million registered voters’ citizenship status was unknown.
A coalition of conservative grassroots activists called on Gov. Greg Abbott to direct the secretary of state to verify the citizenship of all voter registrations.
North Texas news outlet WFAA also reported on the story and noted that the SOS was working on the data-sharing plan with DPS that was eventually put in place.
During the 2019 legislative session, Hughes authored legislation to codify the DPS noncitizen data-sharing process and to make voter roll maintenance mandatory for county officials.
The Senate passed the measure, but the House Elections Committee, then chaired by State Rep. Stephanie Klick (R-Fort Worth), did not consider it.
In 2021, with Hughes still chairing the Senate State Affairs Committee, both chambers passed SB 1, which finally put the DPS noncitizen data-matching process into law.
Another Hughes bill, which would have required proof of citizenship when registering to vote, passed the Senate in 2023 but was not considered by the House Elections Committee chaired by State Rep. Reggie Smith (R-Van Alstyne).
Hughes said Wednesday he would file the legislation again in the upcoming session.
“We would love to see effective legislation make it across the finish line in 2025,” Christine Welborn, president of election accountability group Advancing Integrity, told Texas Scorecard. “We’re glad to see lawmakers getting to the root of the problem and listening to the people.”
