Remember When.....?

VOTER FRAUD ALERT: The @TXsecofstate discovered approx 95,000 individuals identified by DPS as non-U.S. citizens have a matching voter registration record in TX, approx 58,000 of whom have voted in TX elections. Any illegal vote deprives Americans of their voice.

— Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) January 25, 2019

Remember this?  Yeah, that went pear-shaped pretty fast:

After flagging tens of thousands of registered voters for citizenship reviews, the Texas secretary of state’s office is now telling counties that some of those voters don’t belong on the lists it sent out.

Officials in five large counties — Harris, Travis, Fort Bend, Collin and Williamson — told The Texas Tribune they had received calls Tuesday from the secretary of state’s office indicating that some of the voters whose citizenship status the state said counties should consider checking should not actually be on those lists.

The burden here is still on the counties; the Texas SOS can't tell them what to do, no more can the Texas AG; but the big counties can look into it carefully, and it's clear they will:

In Harris County, which encompasses Houston, the Texas secretary of state’s office initially flagged 29,822 names as potential noncitizens on the rolls. But Douglas Ray, a county attorney, said state officials told them those names included people who initially got a driver’s license as noncitizens and then registered to vote at the DMV after becoming naturalized. State officials had validated the citizenship of those people, Ray said, and they were erroneously included on the list.

Ray could not provide an exact number but said county officials believed a “substantial number” of the people flagged by the secretary of state’s office met those criteria. 

What we have here, as the fella said in "Cool Hand Luke," is a failure to communicate:

It’s unclear at this point how many counties have received these calls. County officials said Tuesday they had not received anything in writing about the mistake. It's also unclear how many people will be removed from the original list of approximately 95,000 individuals flagged by the state. The secretary of state's office did not respond to questions Tuesday about how much this would reduce the initial count.

Better known as a clusterfuck.

Smaller counties, unfortunately, aren't waiting around:

Most of the counties with the most registered voters in the state said they were holding off on sending “proof of citizenship” letters to the voters who were flagged. Just Galveston County officials said they were dropping some letters in the mail Monday, starting a 30-day countdown for voters to provide proof of citizenship such as a birth certificate, a U.S. passport or a certificate of naturalization. Voters who don't respond will have their voter registration canceled.

Galveston County officials did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday. 

And for those who think this is all about fraud and the destruction of our democratic way of life:

His office hadn’t determined how many voters would be removed from the list of flagged voters, but he noted officials had found two noncitizens on the rolls. In both of those cases, the individuals had indicated they were not citizens on their voter registration applications but were mistakenly added to the voter rolls, Oldham said.

“That happens,” Oldham said. 

No doubt, no doubt.  And that's why we have courts, and lawsuits:

In a lawsuit filed in federal court in San Antonio, lawyers for the League of United Latin American Citizens' national and Texas arms alleged that Texas Secretary of State David Whitley and Attorney General Ken Paxton violated a portion of the federal Voting Rights Act that prohibits the intimidation of voters.

They point to an advisory issued Friday in which Whitley’s office said it was flagging individuals who had provided the Texas Department of Public Safety with some form of documentation — including a work visa or a green card — that showed they were not citizens when they were obtaining driver’s licenses or ID cards. The state put the number of registered voters who fell into that category at approximately 95,000 — 58,000 of whom had voted in one or more elections from 1996 to 2018.

In its announcement, the secretary of state’s office said it had immediately turned over the data to Paxton’s office. On the same day, Paxton posted the news on Twitter prefaced with “VOTER FRAUD ALERT,” the lawyers noted in the lawsuit.

“These two Texas officials have carefully crafted and orchestrated a program that combines an election advisory ostensibly directed at ensuring that all those registered to vote in the May election are citizens eligible to vote with the use of data that is suspect on its face and a blackout on public access to the data,” LULAC’s lawyers wrote in the complaint.

The secretary of state's office declined to comment, referring a question to the attorney general's office.

The same AG who started this turkey walk.  Heh.  I'd say again that Paxton is a clown; but I say again, it's a representative government.  Because the voter registrar of Travis County is right:

“These allegations of widespread voter fraud are premature and irresponsible. I certainly stand by that statement,” he said. “The story has changed significantly, and we haven’t even started to investigate yet. We don’t know where this is going to end up. It could be we have a serious issue in Texas and maybe we don’t. But statements like that only serve to undermine the integrity of our elections.”

It's bad enough when the Russians are doing it to us; but when we do it to ourselves....

You get what you vote for.