As Texas voters make decisions on several heated Democrat and Republican races this primary season, Attorney General Ken Paxton and Texas Republicans are once again casting doubt on election integrity, with Paxton warning against “stolen elections.”
On Feb. 16, Paxton opened an email tipline to report instances of “illegal voting,” alleging (without statistical support) that undocumented people and noncitizens are voting in the Texas primaries. The right to vote is only extended to U.S. citizens; U.S. green card holders and permanent residents, though residing in the country legally, cannot vote.
“Significant growth of the noncitizen population in Texas and a pattern of partisan efforts to… manipulate electoral outcomes have created urgent risks to local, state, and federal elections,” Paxton alleged in the Feb. 16 announcement.
The state’s messaging also comes as the GOP’s SAVE Act heads to the U.S. Senate this week, which would require voters to present proof of citizenship (passport or birth certificate with photo ID) when they register to vote, and photo ID to cast a ballot. Critics say the bill would lead to voter suppression, creating a hurdle for the many eligible voters who have changed their legal name or don’t have a passport.
Two weeks before Texas voters approved the constitutional amendment Proposition 16, clarifying that only U.S. citizens are allowed to vote despite it already being federal law, Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson announced that she had referred just 33 potential noncitizen voters statewide to the A.G.’s office for investigation back in June.
Travis County Clerk Dyana Limon-Mercado, whose office manages elections, told the Chronicle that noncitizen voting is not an issue in the county despite Nelson and Paxton’s alarm bells.
The secretary of state has sent current Travis County voter data to the U.S. Department of Justice under the pretense that they’re going to review citizenship status, Limon-Mercado said. Previous reviews “have not yielded any discovery of widespread noncitizens getting onto the voter rolls and attempting to sway the outcome of elections.”
“Undocumented people are typically very afraid of interacting with the government for fear of being found and deported,” Limon-Mercado said. Past state efforts to “purge” the voter rolls of noncitizens have only inadvertently removed eligible U.S. citizens from being able to vote, Limon-Mercado added.
Nonetheless, Travis County continues to feel heightened scrutiny from the state level in regard to noncitizen voting and election integrity. “It’s no secret,” Limon-Mercado said. “But we follow all laws. … The secretary of state regularly sends trainers, auditors, and observers to watch us, and we repeatedly get glowing remarks.”
Noncitizen voting isn’t an issue, but Limon-Mercado says that the transition to the secretary of state’s Texas Election Administration Management system rolled out last summer, called TEAM 1.0, is still causing delays for the Travis County Elections Division leading up to the primary.
Voters have reported delays in their registration appearing in the system. The office has also experienced delays in processing ballot-by-mail applications, though in-person voting has remained largely unaffected, Limon-Mercado said.
“To the point of any election discrepancies, the real threat is that the system is so inadequate and unreliable at this point that regular voters, who are fully registered American citizens, are unable to participate or get the information they need to participate in a timely fashion,” Limon-Mercado said. “And it’s causing major delays for election officials.”
When Travis County has reported data discrepancies to the secretary of state – for instance, the new system was not correctly reading the new precinct splits created under the GOP’s redrawn Texas congressional maps – the state failed to notify the elections division in a timely manner that they had sent a corrected data set, Limon-Mercado said.
“Are they setting us up to fail so that we fall into political headlines about election integrity, or is it just incompetence?” the county clerk asked. “It’s hard to tell, honestly.”
This article appears in February 27 • 2026.