President Trump shared faulty statistics Sunday about potential voter fraud in Texas.
On Friday, Texas officials announced that up to 95,000 registered voters in the state may not be U.S. citizens and therefore are ineligible to vote, and that 58,000 of those individuals cast a ballot “in one or more Texas elections.” Texas Secretary of State David Whitley’s office said it flagged these individuals to county voter registrars and asked that they check into whether they are U.S. citizens.
However, a tweet from the president Sunday portrayed the findings as being conclusive.
“58,000 non-citizens voted in Texas, with 95,000 non-citizens registered to vote. These numbers are just the tip of the iceberg. All over the country, especially in California, voter fraud is rampant. Must be stopped. Strong voter ID!” Trump tweeted, tagging “Fox & Friends.”
58,000 non-citizens voted in Texas, with 95,000 non-citizens registered to vote. These numbers are just the tip of the iceberg. All over the country, especially in California, voter fraud is rampant. Must be stopped. Strong voter ID! @foxandfriends
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 27, 2019
This tweet followed a segment on “Fox & Friends Weekend” which covered the voter fraud issue, citing the secretary of state’s evaluation.
The Texas Tribune quickly fact-checked the president with a series of tweets, supplemented by its original reporting. “This is not true. We do not know yet if 58,000 non-citizens voted in Texas. The secretary of state’s office in Texas has not made this claim,” the Texas Tribune’s official Twitter account said in response to Trump, beginning a long thread of tweets.
1/ This is not true. We do not know yet if 58,000 non-citizens voted in Texas. The secretary of state’s office in Texas has not made this claim.
Follow this thread for more. https://t.co/epbsdIrlzt https://t.co/IB65q9iSXK
— Texas Tribune (@TexasTribune) January 27, 2019
“Those 95,000 registered voters are individuals who the state says have provided some form of documentation that showed they were not a citizen when they were obtaining a driver’s license or an ID card,” the Tribune tweeted.” Of those 95,000, 58,000 individuals cast a ballot in one or more elections from 1996-2018. That is a 22 years. That does not mean the state is saying 58,000 non-citizens voted. We do not yet know if any of those 58,000 are really non-citizens.”
The Tribune also noted that some of these individuals may have become naturalized citizens since first receiving their ID card and that “it’s unclear exactly how many of those individuals are not actually U.S. citizens and whether that number will be available in the future.”
Whitley said the data used in its yearlong investigation, obtained from the Department of Public Safety, was passed on to the Texas attorney general’s office “as the Secretary of State has no statutory enforcement authority to investigate or prosecute alleged illegal activity in connection with an election.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican who has sided with Trump on other immigration issues, sent out a tweet Friday that declared a “Voter fraud alert” in all capital letters.
“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,” he tweeted.
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
In a statement, Paxton further said his “Election Fraud Unit stands ready to investigate and prosecute crimes against the democratic process when needed.”
“We have obtained a number of successful non-citizen voter fraud convictions, including prison sentences for Rosa Ortega in Tarrant County and Laura Garza in Montgomery County,” he said. “And earlier this month, investigators from our office arrested Marites Curry, a non-citizen charged with illegal voting in Navarro County. Nothing is more vital to preserving our Constitution than the integrity of our voting process, and my office will do everything within its abilities to solidify trust in every election in the state of Texas. I applaud Secretary of State Whitley for his proactive work in safeguarding our elections.”
Trump has previously claimed that “millions” of illegal votes were cast in the 2016 election, though experts pushed back, saying there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud. The Trump administration ended its controversial voter fraud commission in January 2018 as it faced a number of legal challenges.
