A voting sign written in Spanish and English is seen as voters leave Austin City Hall's polling place during the presidential primary in Austin, Texas, on Super Tuesday, March 5, 2024 ( AFP / SUZANNE CORDEIRO)

Misinformation about non-citizens voting in Texas spreads online

Federal law prohibits anyone who is not a US citizen from participating in presidential elections, and voters must swear under penalty of perjury that they are eligible to cast a ballot. However, posts are circulating online that say Texas will allow non-citizens to vote in the general election on November 5, 2024. This claim is misleading, and experts told AFP that Texas has measures in place to prevent those without citizenship from voting.

"The Texas Secretary of State’s announcement that illegal aliens will be allowed to vote in the 2024 election is now trending at the top of X. The corrupt power structure is now in complete panic mode because they know the people have awakened to their crimes!" says an October 8, 2024 X post by InfoWars founder Alex Jones with thousands of interactions.

Another iteration of the claim includes a clip of Frank Phillips, an election administrator in north Texas's Denton County, explaining the state's voter identification rules.

"BREAKING: Texas Secretary of State directs poll workers to accept NON CITIZEN driver’s licenses as ID to vote. WATCH Denton County Elections Administrator Frank Phillips telling poll worker trainees SOS elections director advised non citizen ID ok to vote," says another October 8 X post with more than 30,000 likes.

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Screenshot from X taken October 11, 2024
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Screenshot from X taken October 11, 2024

 

The same claim has circulated elsewhere on X, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, TikTok and Gettr

Texas requires voters to bring one of seven forms of photo ID or explain why they cannot, with provisions to present another type of identification at the polling place (archived here).

Federal law also prohibits non-citizens from voting in presidential elections. The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (archived here) requires all states to use a common form on which prospective voters in federal contests must attest under penalty of perjury that they are US citizens.

The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (archived here) also "explicitly prohibits non-citizens from voting in federal elections," Rachel Orey, senior associate director of the Bipartisan Policy Center's Elections Project (archived here), previously told AFP.

Voters must be verified

The posts claiming that Texas officials will allow illegal voting in November refer to an advisory issued by Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson on October 8, 2024, about accepting forms of "limited term" IDs as proof of citizenship at polling places. These ID cards are given to some non-citizens who are legally allowed to live in the state on a short-term basis (archived here and here).

In 2019, then-acting Texas secretary of state David Whitley advised officials to delete as many as 98,000 people from voter registration lists over concerns that they were not citizens (archived here). However, after civil rights organizations sued Whitley, a federal court in Texas blocked the proposed purges over concerns that many of the people being removed were people who had limited term IDs but who had since become naturalized citizens.

"Notwithstanding good intentions, the road to a solution was inherently paved with flawed results, meaning perfectly legal naturalized Americans were burdened with what the Court finds to be ham-handed and threatening correspondence from the state which did not politely ask for information but rather exemplifies the power of government to strike fear and anxiety and to intimidate the least powerful among us," judge Fred Biery wrote in his February 2019 ruling (archived here).

Soon after the ruling, Whitley resigned after failing to secure enough votes in the state legislature to be confirmed.

The October 8 advisory outlines two protocols for election officials to follow when a voter gives them a limited term ID at a polling station. When a voter has a limited term ID and is already on the county's list of registered voters, they can be given a regular ballot since state officials would have already determined they are eligible to vote when they registered.

If they are not on the voter roll, they can be issued a provisional ballot, but an election official must inform them that attempting to vote while not being a citizen is a felony crime in Texas. However, that provisional ballot will not be counted unless the voter comes back with an acceptable form of ID or the election official finds proof they actually registered (archived here).

Phillips, the Denton County Elections Administrator who is in the video posted online explaining the limited term ID rules, said state officials always verify potential voters' citizenship and eligibility when they submit a registration application, which is why voters with limited term IDs can be given regular ballots.

"As an Election Administrator, my sworn duty is to perform elections in accordance with the Election Code. The Secretary of State is the authority that enforces and advises on the Election Code," he said in an October 11 email to AFP. "So, when the Secretary of State’s Office says that is the method to take, it is my obligation to teach my poll workers in the manner prescribed."

The Texas Secretary of State's website says it checks with the Department of Public Safety, which issues state driver licenses, and the US Social Security Administration to verify a person's voter eligibility before adding them to county registration lists (archived here).

 

In response to criticism of the October 8 advisory, Nelson issued an updated notice on October 11, saying those attempting to vote with a limited term ID must also show proof that they have since become naturalized US citizens in order to receive a ballot (archived here and here).

'Absurd on its face'

Calvin Jillson, a professor of political science at Southern Methodist University in Dallas (archived here), said the accusation that Texas officials will allow non-citizens to vote is "absurd on its face," and the state has measures in place to prevent people from fraudulently registering to vote.

"What the Secretary of State is saying is that when someone comes in and has a temporary driver license, you should be cautious, but if their name appears on the voter list when they register to vote, they would have had to provide additional information of citizenship, and so you give them a regular ballot," he said on October 11.

Jillson added: "So this is not allowing illegal voting -- Texas would be the last place on the globe that would permit that. And so the language in here is pretty clear."

Joshua Blank, the research director of the Texas Politics Center at the University of Texas at Austin (archived here), says the southern state has some of the "most restrictive" voter laws in the US, and that past instances of attempted voter fraud have been so low that it is "essentially meaningless."

"I mean, it's sort of crazy to think that you've got these immigrants supposedly hiding in the shadows, committing all sorts of violent crimes, and yet they're going to stick their head up out of their hiding places to come vote -- like what world is this?" he said on October 11.

AFP has debunked other claims about the 2024 general election here.

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