Judge orders Texas not to purge voters after botching list
Source: Associated Press
Paul J. Weber, Associated Press Updated 4:47 pm CST, Wednesday, February 27, 2019
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Saying there is no evidence of widespread election fraud in Texas, a federal judge Wednesday blocked the removal of any registered voter after state Republican leaders loudly but wrongly questioned the U.S. citizenship of tens of thousands of people.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Fred Biery of San Antonio temporarily halts a bungled search for illegal voters in Texas, which began in January with the release of a deeply flawed list of 98,000 voters who were flagged as possibly not being citizens. Those names were immediately referred to prosecutors , and Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton amplified the announcement as a "VOTER FRAUD ALERT."
Within days, however, it emerged that the list wasn't vetted and included scores of U.S. citizens. Biery called the search a "a solution looking for a problem" and barred elections officials from asking anyone on the list to affirm their citizenship.
"Notwithstanding good intentions, the road to a solution was inherently paved with flawed results, meaning perfectly legal naturalized Americans were burdened with what the Court finds to be ham-handed and threatening correspondence from the state which did not politely ask for information but rather exemplifies the power of government to strike fear and anxiety and to intimidate the least powerful among us," Biery wrote.
Read more: https://www.chron.com/news/texas/article/Judge-orders-Texas-not-to-purge-voters-after-13649806.php
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