Texas Is Looking for Fraudulent Immigrant Voters

Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.

Our boys in Texas are busy on the voter fraud front:

The Texas secretary of state’s office announced Friday it would send local election officials a list of 95,000 registered voters who the state says counties should consider checking to see whether they are U.S. citizens and, therefore, eligible to vote….Among the individuals flagged, about 58,000 individuals cast ballots in one or more elections from 1996 to 2018.

Texas seems to produce about 6 million votes per national election (average of presidential and nonpresidential cycles), so that’s about 70 million votes. Add in local elections and you’re probably at around 100 million. So if every single one of those 58,000 votes was fraudulent, that would be…

…about 0.06% of all votes cast.

That doesn’t seem so bad. But of course, the true number won’t be 58,000. Nor will it be 5,800 or 580 or even 58. It will be about zero. And how many of the 95,000 people on the list will turn out to be noncitizens? There will be a few. I’m going to take a guess and say that Texas will verify noncitizen status for, oh, 500 people. Who wants to take the over?

POSTSCRIPT: Actually, I suppose that before we bet on a number, we have to bet on whether Texas will ever even release the results of their cunning little dragnet. Probably not. My guess is that they’ll find a few people, make a big deal out of it, and then quietly shut down the whole thing.

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate