AUSTIN — Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson said Monday her agency had identified 2,724 “potential noncitizens” who were registered to vote in the state after cross-referencing the state’s registered voters with a federal database.

The list of voters included 277 from Dallas County, according to a breakdown of the data the agency provided.

The secretary of state did not remove those it flagged from the state’s voter rolls. Instead, the agency provided the voter files to individual counties for further investigation. If an investigation finds that any noncitizen voted in a prior election, they will be referred to the attorney general.

The database the secretary of state used was the SAVE database kept by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. It is the federal database that tracks citizenship records.

Political Points

Get the latest politics news from North Texas and beyond.

By signing up, you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

“Only eligible United States citizens may participate in our elections,” Nelson said in a statement Monday. “Everyone’s right to vote is sacred and must be protected. We encourage counties to conduct rigorous investigations to determine if any voter is ineligible — just as they do with any other data set we provide,” Secretary Nelson said.

Related

Carlos Salas, 78, who recently became a U.S. citizen and voted in his first election, holds...

The voters who were identified as non-citizens will receive a notice from their county voting registrar and will have 30 days to present proof of citizenship so they can remain a registered voter. If there isn’t a response received after 30 days the registration will be canceled.

This is not the first time Texas officials have said they identified potential noncitizens in state voter rolls. Last August, before the 2024 presidential election, Gov. Greg Abbott said the state had purged some 6,500 people who were “potential noncitizens” in the previous three years.

However, an investigation by ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and Votebeat that was published in October 2024 found that the governor’s claims about noncitizens on the voter rolls were inflated. The report also found that nine U.S. Citizens were incorrectly labeled as noncitizens.

A spokesperson for the Dallas County elections office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday regarding the news release from the secretary of state.

For years, Republicans, including President Donald Trump, have repeatedly said non-citizens are voting in elections in the United States. Trump repeated similar claims following his 2020 loss to Joe Biden and leading up to the 2024 presidential election.

Texas officials have made similar statements, including Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is challenging John Cornyn for U.S. Senate. In the Nov. 4 election, voters will vote on a constitutional amendment that adds “persons who are not citizens of the United States” to a list of those ineligible to vote.

However, Texas law already prohibits noncitizens from voting in elections. Federal law also prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections.