Claims of voter fraud distract from issues

million), and 11 who actually went to the polls. Defending his dragnet in court, he called these meager numbers “the tip of the iceberg.” Not surprisingly, a federal judge ordered him to stop, saying “there is no iceberg; only an icicle, largely created by confusion and administrative error.”

Fortunately, if Texas wants to use DPS records to “guarantee the right to vote for all eligible Texas voters,” as Whitley said in his original statement, there’s a much easier way than searching for needles in haystacks. He can obey a federal judge’s order last year to comply with the National Voter Registration Act, the “Motor Voter” law. That federal statute, passed in 1993, requires states to enable people getting or updating drivers’ licenses to register to vote in one simultaneous step. Yet for years, Whitley’s office has been preventing people who renew their license or change their address online from taking advantage of this simple, federally guaranteed method of registering.

Rather than voluntarily abide by the Motor Voter law or at least grudgingly obey the judge’s order, Whitley has filed an appeal that was argued this week. That’s any litigant’s right, but in its papers Texas barely defends its compliance with the 1993 statute. Mostly, the state’s lawyers just claim the individual voters who brought the lawsuit aren’t the right parties to appear in court.

This legal argument is dubious, but regardless of the procedural technicalities, Whitley has no excuse for unapologetically flouting a federal law enacted to help people vote. Over one million Texans deal with DPS online, many of whom may have been disenfranchised by the extra, illegal barrier to registration Whitley is putting in their way.

Of course, this isn’t the first time a court found Texas’ zeal to advance voting rights to be somewhat, well, selective. Judges found that the original version of our voter identification law discriminated against minorities and others without the prescribed forms of identification. Recall that a hunting license was fine, while a student ID was prohibited. And Texas’ gerrymandering of Congressional districts was also litigated wastefully for years before being struck down. Now, the state faces lawsuits from civil rights groups over Whitley’s list.

But if Texas’ recent record isn’t exemplary, there’s always tomorrow. When it comes to using DPS records, here’s hoping the secretary of state decides to focus more on promoting civic participation and less on chasing after an almost mythical species of voter fraud.

Texas Secretary of State David Whitley announced a few days ago that his office has identified 95,000 people listed on the state’s voter rolls who also provided information to the Department of Public Safety indicating that they aren’t United States citizens. Because this lack of citizenship would make them ineligible to vote, Whitley forwarded the names to county election administrators. According to Whitley, 58,000 of the 95,000 have voted in at least one election since 1996.

Noncitizens shouldn’t be voting, and no one can object to careful and legal efforts to keep voter rolls current. But Whitley’s office acknowledged that the 95,000 identifications were “WEAK matches,” using all caps for emphasis. Because people who provide documents indicating non-citizenship, like green cards, aren’t required to go back to DPS and change their status when they get their citizenship, most or all of the 95,000 may be qualified to cast ballots.

Already a handful of county election officials — including in Harris County — have determined that more than 20,000 of the names don’t belong on the list. Yet other counties are sending notices to the people Whitley’s office identified demanding that they prove their citizenship. If they fail to get the notices or respond in time, or if they can’t muster adequate documentation fast enough, their registration can be canceled.

Whitley’s hunt for stealthy foreign electors probably isn’t the best use of our tax dollars. Noncitizens almost never try to vote. In 2017, the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School set out to test President Trump’s claim that millions voted illegally the year before. Responding to the center’s survey, election administrators in 42 jurisdictions reported only 30 cases of noncitizen voting — this out of 23.5 million votes cast in their locales. Other scholars have also emphasized the near total absence of noncitizen voting. If you weren’t a citizen, would you risk prosecution and possible deportation just to gain the infinitesimal say in government represented by a single vote?

Previous attempts to purge illegal voters haven’t exactly hit pay dirt, either. In Florida, a 2012 effort to use driver’s license records to remove noncitizens ended up erroneously fingering a significant number of eligible voters and embroiling the state in years of pointless litigation. It was eventually abandoned, having found that 85 of the 180,000 people originally identified weren’t eligible.

In Kansas, Secretary of State Kris Kobach claimed to have found 43 noncitizens who registered to vote (out of 1.8