Texas judge halts part of voter purge effort

AUSTIN—With the general election only weeks away, a Texas judge has temporarily blocked the state from ordering counties to strip their voter lists of names that belong to people the government thinks may be dead after thousands of letters were sent to voters telling them to confirm they are alive.

A new state law requires that voter rolls be checked against the Social Security Administration’s death master file. The agency had flagged about 81,000 voters statewide who are potentially dead.

Some of those names can be confirmed to death records with an exact match of name, birth date and social security number, but others have only partial matches. Some county election officials, most notably in Harris County, sent letters to people on the partial-match list warning they could be purged unless they verified they were still alive.

Four living voters who received letters sued, claiming the effort could wrongly purge living voters in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act. On Wednesday, State District Judge Tim Sulak in Austin barred the state from ordering counties to purge voters on the partial match list.

The judge’s ruling still allows letters to be sent to those who are considered strong matches to death records, said David Richards, attorney for the voters who sued. A spokesman for the Texas secretary of state, who oversees state elections, declined comment Thursday. The Texas attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to telephone messages seeking comment.

State elections officials have said that even if someone was wrongly purged, they would not be turned away on Election Day and would be reinstated at the polls.