Hi, y’all!

I’m taking you on a bit of a ride, so bear with me …

For months, we’ve been reporting on the list of more than 2,700 registered voters who were flagged as potential noncitizens after the state ran them through a federal program called SAVE. Some were indeed noncitizens but were registered due to clerical errors by local officials (remember, we don’t have online voter registration in Texas — but that’s a whole other conversation). Others turned out to not only be U.S. citizens, but also proved as much to election officials. 

One of our big findings was that hundreds of people on that list had registered to vote through the Texas Department of Public Safety — which already requires proof of citizenship and lawful presence to obtain a state ID or driver’s license. 

The state told us it hadn’t originally checked the list of potential noncitizens from SAVE against DPS records. But months later they asked DPS to check everyone on the list against its records.  

Fast forward to yesterday, when I got a tip from various sources that the secretary of state’s office got that data back from DPS — and it confirmed that some people who were flagged as potential noncitizens had provided proof of citizenship to DPS either while registering to vote or while applying for a driver’s license or state ID. You can read more about it here. 

But we don’t have all the answers yet! We still don’t know exactly how many confirmed U.S. citizens were flagged and removed from the voter roll. We also don’t know how many will be reinstated or how many were confirmed as noncitizens. 

I’m working on getting that information and will have an update for you, so please stay on this ride with me!

If you’ve got thoughts or questions about this, send them my way at [email protected]. 

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