AUSTIN (KXAN) — An investigation from our media partners at the Texas Tribune highlights why all voters should confirm their voter registration status while there’s still time.
The Texas Tribune, in partnership with ProPublica and Votebeat, found a voter near the Houston-area who was marked as not being a U.S. Citizen and then kicked off the voter roll in Texas.
It comes after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced the state has purged the voter roll of about 1 million people since 2021, once Senate Bill 1 went into effect. It was an effort by lawmakers to ensure election integrity.
Abbott said those efforts would be continuous and ongoing. However, voters should be notified by their counties if additional information is needed before they’re removed, according to non-partisan group League of Women Voters of Texas.
“You should have gotten a letter from the county, and you were supposed to reply to it within 30 days,” said Valerie DeBill, Vice President of Voter Service with the League of Women Voters in the Austin area. “Ideally, you would have responded within that 30 days, but a lot of folks don’t. And state law says that as long as you are correcting something, essentially, you can do that at any point.”
So what should you do if you’re wrongfully removed and need to prove you legally should be registered to vote?
According to the Texas League of Women Voters, you should do the following:
- Contact your county elections office to see what it is that they’re missing from you, if you received a letter.
- Call the Secretary of State’s Office to cross check information from your county.
- Send missing documents to your county elections office, then confirm your voter registration status online through the Texas Secretary of State’s Office.
Even if you’re not aware, or are unsure whether you received a letter asking for more information, you should still confirm your voter registration status.
With the 2024 Election being one week out, DeBill said it’s not too late to be added back to the voter rolls if you’re able to verify you were wrongfully removed, and are able to provide all required documents to verify you’re a registered citizen. In fact, DeBill said this can even been done at the polls.
“There are things you can do during early voting that you can’t do on Election Day,” DeBill said. “So you definitely want to find out this week… One of the perils of voting in Texas is that our laws are so complicated.”