An investigation into Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's six-year crackdown on noncitizen voting found that he produced just one charge from a referral list of 53 suspects.
Through a public records request, NBC News obtained 53 names referred to Paxton's office for investigation — and only one, Ada Otuka, was formally charged with noncitizen voting. The NBC News report was published on Monday.
Paxton, who is running as a Republican for the U.S Senate, has been silent on his failed prosecutorial crusade against "widespread" voter fraud, something that experts say is wildly overblown.
The other two noncitizens prosecuted in Texas since 2020, Eliseo Morales-Tapia and Samuel Hall, were not on the referral list at all, NBC News found.
Last summer, Paxton's office announced investigations into more than 100 cases of potential noncitizen voting spanning the 2020, 2022, and 2024 elections.
"Illegal aliens and foreign nationals must not be allowed to influence Texas elections by casting illegal ballots with impunity. I will not allow it to continue. … If you're a noncitizen who illegally cast a ballot, you will face the full force of the law," Paxton said at the time.
Paxton's office has provided no public updates on the investigation and did not respond to NBC News for comment, the outlet reported.
At least five of the 53 people referred for investigation were actually U.S. citizens, according to court records reviewed by NBC News.
Joshua Blank, research director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, told NBC News the inclusion of citizens in such lists is standard.
"The idea that fraud is a common occurrence in the electorate is a position that's political but not backed up by any fact whatsoever," Blank said.
Paxton alleged in 2019 that 58,000 noncitizens had voted in Texas — a claim quickly refuted in court, NBC News reported.
"The real challenge is that no solution is really going to solve a problem that doesn't exist," Blank added.
Rochelle Garza, president of the Texas Civil Rights Project, told NBC News that rhetoric from Austin has alarmed voting rights advocates across the state.
"All of this is about undermining people's belief in the integrity of elections and having a scapegoat," Garza said.
The conservative Heritage Foundation has tracked noncitizen voting nationally and recorded fewer than four cases per year since 2000, NBC News reported.
