As the 2024 election nears, Texas Republicans are raising concerns about voter fraud, focusing on noncitizens. Critics argue this unfairly targets Hispanic voters while Fort Bend County prepares for the election, with both parties working to engage and protect voters.
Republican leaders in Texas have heightened their attention to voter fraud as the 2024 presidential election approaches, which has led to concerns regarding noncitizen voters. This has elicited criticism from advocates who contend that the state is unjustly targeting Hispanic communities.
Both political parties are preparing for the November election in Fort Bend County, one of Texas' most diverse regions, where a third of the population is comprised of immigrants. The county's suspense list has recently been updated to include more than 53,000 voters. This means that their registration will be automatically terminated if they fail to vote or update their information. After residents verified their current status, that figure decreased by nearly 600.
John Oldham, the Fort Bend Elections Administrator, stated that “individuals are on the suspense list because they failed to update their registration after moving and seeing media reports.”
Edward Cavey, the leader of the Fort Bend GOP's election integrity team, has been actively engaged in the evaluation of voter domicile. The group challenges voter registrations by utilizing data from the U.S. Postal Service. However, local authorities contend that this data does not satisfy the legal requirement for "personal knowledge" required to submit challenges. Cavey maintains his confidence in the integrity of the county's election office, asserting that he has not observed any significant indications of voter fraud.
Conversely, Jennifer Cantu of the Fort Bend County Democratic Party is collaborating with local advocates to guarantee that Hispanic seniors are registered to vote. Cantu is also assisting in the re-registration of voters who have been removed from the registers, particularly in the wake of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's allegations of election fraud against Hispanic Democrats in South Texas.
Republican state leaders have expressed apprehension regarding the voting rights of noncitizens in recent years; however, a Heritage Foundation analysis discovered that there are only a handful of instances of this in Texas. Oldham observed that Fort Bend County has experienced a very low number of noncitizens registering to vote in the past 15 years, with only one verified instance of a noncitizen actually participating.
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