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The Secretary of State’s office has now directed Harris County to correct its voter rolls after some voters were found to have registered illegally by listing P.O. boxes as residential addresses on their voter registration forms.
This comes after State Senator Paul Bettencourt—who formerly served as Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector and voter registrar—discovered potentially thousands of illegal registrations and sent a letter to the Secretary of State asking for an investigation.
Bettencourt is now praising the order by Secretary of State Jane Nelson to purge these voters from the rolls as a win for election integrity. “Whenever you have thousands of illegal registrations, there’s always a potential for fraud to creep into any election process,” he said.
He also pointed out that these estimated 3,000–4,000 voters could have a major impact on small down-ballot and judicial races throughout the county—so eliminating them is a major step forward when it comes to public trust.
“If they know there are several thousand people registered that have moved out of town or whatever, it just throws a lack of trust into the election outcome,” Bettencourt said.
He also mentioned how happy he is to see that Texans finally have a quick and efficient way to address these voter-security questions, thanks to legislation he authored and passed during the 89th legislative session.