Whitley is resolute in voter purge fiasco
Secretary of state stands by his work
There is no apology coming from the state official who launched a controversial attempt to purge nearly 100,000 Texas voters from the rolls.
During a hearing in the Texas Senate to save his job, new Secretary of State David Whitley repeatedly refused to say if his office made any mistakes in putting out lists of suspected ineligible voters that included thousands of names that should not have been on it.
The effort to pinpoint voters who are not U.S. citizens has brought praise from Republicans as high up as President Donald Trump, who have called it part of the fight against voter fraud. But it also has resulted in lawsuits from civil rights groups who say the analysis Whitley’s office
conducted discriminates against immigrants and is calculated to dissuade them from voting.
Whitley told lawmakers that he stands by his work, characterizing the purge list as an effort to make sure the state’s voter rolls are as accurate as possible. He plans to conduct similar searches for noncitizens among the state’s 15.8 million voters every month.
“We have to get this right; I believe we owe it to Texas voters,” Whitley said at a confirmation hearing before the Senate’s nominations committee. The committee is set to vote on his confirmation Feb. 14. If he passes, he would then need to be confirmed by a two-thirds vote of the entire Texas Senate.
‘I think it’s irrelevant’
Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff said an estimated 5,000 Bexar County voters were on the list initially sent out by the state. On receiving it, Bexar County Elections Administrator Jacque Callanen took a wait-and-see attitude. She said at the time that she was not opening the computer list until the dust settles.
State Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, repeatedly pressed Whitley on whether his agency made mistakes in how it handled the list. It took elections officials from a handful of counties just a few days to identify 20,000 names that were wrongly included.
The suspected noncitizen voters were flagged based on an analysis of documents the voters provided to the Department of Public Safety when they applied for driver licenses. Whitley’s office advised county elections officials throughout Texas to send notices to those voters giving them 30 days to prove they are U.S. citizens — a move that brought condemnation from voter advocacy groups and at least three lawsuits.
“I will readily level with you that we can always improve the process,” Whitley said, responding to Watson’s questions. “But the data is what the data is. And we were confident that that was the best data that we could get from DPS.”
At the same hearing, Whitley refused to answer Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, who asked him to define voter suppression.
“I think it’s irrelevant,” Whitley responded.
West fired back.
“You’re the secretary of state, sir,” he said. “It is relevant to me if I’m going to vote for your confirmation.”
It wasn’t just Democrats, either. State Rep. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, told Whitley that the press release his office sent out announcing the results of the analysis had “regrettable statements.”
Whitley refused to say how many people his office still believes could be noncitizen voters. In McLennan County, the Waco Herald-Tribune has reported that every single person on the list was found to be a citizen, lawfully registered to vote. In Harris County alone, 18,000 voters who are citizens have been removed from the list, which initially had 29,000 names.
Six-year rise
A native of Alice, Whitley was appointed to be the Texas secretary of state by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in December to replace Rolando Pablos, who resigned to take a job in the private sector.
Whitley has strong ties to Abbott. He went to work for then-Attorney General Abbott in 2012, the same year he earned his law degree from the University of Texas, according to his LinkedIn page. He rose from law clerk to assistant deputy attorney general, then joined Abbott’s gubernatorial staff shortly after the 2014 elections and was named a deputy chief of staff in April of 2017.
In December, he was appointed secretary of state — six years after completing his law degree.
State Sen. Carol Alvarado, DHouston, said the mistakes Whitley’s office made are so big that they were either the result of failing to double-check data or Whitley’s office sent out bad information intentionally.
“Which one of those occurred?” Alvarado asked.
Whitley insisted the data had been double-checked.
“The intention was to be as accurate as possible,” he said.
Harris County, a Democratic stronghold, had the most voters on the purge list.
Whitley insisted that the purge was always intended to be a collaboration with county elections officials who have the authority to remove voters from the rolls. He said he was expecting the counties to help by scrutinizing the lists.
Watson took exception to that characterization. He said the initial press release implied the list was more complete than Whitley is now suggesting. When the state released the initial numbers, it also referred 58,000 names to the attorney general’s office for possible criminal prosecution. That gave the impression that the data analysis was complete, Watson said.
“I’m not satisfied with the answers I got,” Alvarado said after the hearing.
Lawsuits quickly filed
It wasn’t just legislators questioning Whitley. After he testified, dozens of citizens spoke at the hearing, most against his confirmation.
Austin resident Julieta Garibay was one of those people on the voter purge list. She said she got a driver license before she became a naturalized citizen. But now she is a legal U.S. citizen.
About 50,000 Texans are naturalized each year.
Garibay said it was frustrating to have to prove her citizenship.
“It was clear they were trying to suppress my vote,” Garibay said.
While some counties are analyzing the list or are waiting for more clear direction, a handful of counties have already sent out notices to voters who were flagged by the state, demanding their proof of citizenship. Galveston County was among a handful that quickly sent out the notices and is now being sued by a coalition of civil rights groups including the ACLU.
On Monday, the activists requested an injunction to stop the voter purge immediately.