BUSTED: ACLU Sues Texas For Unlawfully Purging Registered Voters By Identifying Them As Non-Citizens

Naturalized citizens are getting purged from the voters rolls in Texas, which drove the ACLU and others to file suit in U.S. District court demanding that the secretary of state explain a program that threatens to remove naturalized citizens from the voter rolls. Ken Paxton’s office has been asked previously for this information and has failed to provide it.

BREAKING: We’re suing the state of Texas. @TXsecofstate continues to incorrectly identify registered voters as “non-citizens” and has refused to reveal records that disclose how these purged voters are being identified as such.

This is voter suppression. #TXDeservesBetter pic.twitter.com/3t5IINCke3

— ACLU of Texas (@ACLUTx) February 1, 2022

ACLU.org

“The right to vote is what makes this country a free one and naturalized citizens in Texas, and every U.S. state, should not have to worry about being purged from the voting rolls. We all deserve the chance to cast our ballots freely, safely and equally,” said Paul Smith, senior vice president at Campaign Legal Center. “Sadly, it is clear that the court now needs to step in and protect that freedom by compelling the state to produce the records for this program—thereby making our elections safe, accessible and transparent.”

“Texas can’t shirk its obligations under federal law to release information about its new voter purge program,” said Ashley Harris, attorney at the ACLU of Texas. “The public deserves to know why Texas continues to falsely flag U.S. citizens for removal from the voter rolls.”

“The Secretary of State’s voter purge program once again surgically targets naturalized U.S. citizens for investigation and removal from the voter rolls,” stated Nina Perales, MALDEF Vice President of Litigation. “Naturalized U.S. citizens have the same right to vote as all other citizens, and this new lawsuit seeks to ensure that Texas treats its voters fairly.”

“It seems that Texas is incapable – or worse, unwilling – to learn from the past. Racial and ethnic discrimination in voting has been a sad part of Texas’s history continuing in the present. And discriminating against naturalized citizens falls into this unfortunate pattern,” commented Ezra Rosenberg, co-director of the Voting Rights Project for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “We need to shed light on precisely how Texas is identifying voters it wants to purge from the rolls in order to ensure that the precious right to vote is not snatched from eligible voters, whose only ‘crime’ is that they are naturalized and not native-born citizens.”

“This effort to block Black and brown Texans’ access to the ballot is part of a larger, nationwide effort to dismantle the fundamentals of our democracy. Naturalized citizens who are registered to vote have every right to have their voices heard in every election,” said Brenda Wright, Senior Advisor for Legal Strategies at Demos. “The state owes the people of Texas transparency regarding its voter purge practices to ensure fairness and confidence in the democratic process.”

It’s interesting how the more things change the more they are the same. Three of my grandparents were naturalized citizens. They were born in Ireland and they became Democrats. That makes me a third generation Democrat even though I’m only a second generation American, as such things are reckoned. This was the era in the beginning of the 20th century when there were signs in the window saying, “No Irish Need Apply.” We don’t want your kind is an old cry. Now we hear it again in Texas, and it’s a very old cry down there as well.

And this voter purge issue is not surprising in the least in Texas. The demographics of the country are changing, and they’re certainly changing in Texas. Ken Paxton, Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick represent the Old Guard and they depend upon voter suppression, purging the voter roles and of course, gerrymandering, their favorite ploy, to keep the old order in order. It’s a losing battle. Reality is what it is, time marches on and the melting pot gets more diversified all the time, both here domestically and internationally.

Another interesting lawsuit. Ken Paxton sure has his hands full. And his hands are not exactly capable ones and that is putting it mildly. But maybe he can take time off from his “27 lawsuits in 27 months of the Biden administration,” one of my favorite lines of all time, to deal with the ACLU busting him on voter purge.