Natalia Contreras, Votebeat

Trump supporter labeled a noncitizen and kicked off Texas’ voter rolls

Mary Howard-Elley fervently believes illegal immigration in the U.S. is a critical problem that only former President Donald Trump can solve. She says the continuation of his border wall and promised mass deportations will make the country safer.

She agrees with Trump’s unfounded claims that Democrats are opening the borders to allow noncitizens to vote, fearing that it could ultimately cost him the election.

Howard-Elley didn’t pay much attention when Texas Gov. Greg Abbott helped fuel that narrative by announcing that the state had removed thousands of supposed noncitizens from its rolls, claiming some had a history of voting.

Then the U.S. citizen learned she was among them.

The retired Transportation Security Administration agent was confused by how the county could come to that conclusion. And she seethed at the idea that anyone would question the citizenship of a former federal employee with the “whitest name you could have.”

[As Texas refuses online voter registration, paper applications get lost]

The elections office in Montgomery County, just north of Houston, had sent Howard-Elley a letter in late January saying that she had been flagged after she indicated that she was not a U.S. citizen in response to a jury summons. She had 30 days to provide the county proof of citizenship or she would be removed from the voter rolls, according to the letter.

“Who is allowing people to do this to United States citizens? I understand we have a problem with immigration, but come on now,” Howard-Elley said in an interview.

The 52-year-old disputes the county’s claim that she responded to the jury duty summons by saying she was not a citizen. Instead, Howard-Elley said, she called and asked to be exempted from jury duty because of guardianship duties for three of her grandchildren.

The Montgomery County district clerk’s office, which organizes jury duty, did not respond to repeated questions and denied a public records request for Howard-Elley’s response to the jury summons, asserting it was exempt from disclosure.

Regardless of how she was flagged as a noncitizen, Howard-Elley wanted to ensure she could vote. She ordered several copies of her certified Louisiana birth certificate and confirmed receipt with an elections office employee. She thought the matter was resolved.

But Howard-Elley’s registration was not reinstated, making her the 10th U.S. citizen identified by ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and Votebeat who was removed from the rolls as a potential noncitizen. The news organizations tracked them down as part of an investigation that found Abbott’s claims about the state removing more than 6,500 noncitizens were likely inflated and, in some cases, wrong.

The 10 U.S. citizens who were struck from the rolls represented a range of racial and political backgrounds, and most were removed as the result of human error.

Abbott’s press release provided fodder for Republicans warning that noncitizens could vote in large numbers and sway the election, though experts say such instances are exceedingly rare.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the federal government last week, claiming the Department of Homeland Security has refused to help the state check the citizenship status of some registered voters. The federal agency offers states access to a database that can be used to verify immigration status, but Paxton argued it’s inadequate and requires a fee for each verification. Ten other states use the database for voting-related purposes.

Neither Abbott nor Paxton responded to questions for this story. DHS has not filed a response to the attorney general’s lawsuit in federal court.

From left: Howard-Elley with her grandsons, Skylar Lopez, 6, and Bryson Lopez, 8, at her home in Splendora

From left: Howard-Elley with her grandsons, Skylar Lopez, 6, and Bryson Lopez, 8, at her home in Splendora Credit: Danielle Villasana for ProPublica and The Texas Tribune

Howard-Elley’s case shows how eligible voters can be removed from the rolls — and how tough it can be to get back on.

She didn’t realize her registration was canceled until reporters called her this month. Darla Brooks, the Montgomery County voter registration manager, told both Howard-Elley and the news organizations that she had not been reinstated in March because her birth certificate arrived after the 30-day window she was given to prove her citizenship.

On Oct. 14, Brooks said Howard-Elley had now also missed the registration deadline for this year’s election and would not be able to vote.

The election official was wrong.

Multiple voting rights lawyers pointed to a state law that says counties should immediately reinstate voters’ registrations that were wrongly canceled. Brooks initially told reporters that the law did not apply to Howard-Elley because the county had followed proper procedures when removing her.

But when the news organizations brought the same question to the secretary of state’s office, which provides counties with guidance on implementing election laws, the answer was different.

A 2021 agency advisory instructs counties to immediately reinstate voters removed for failing to respond to a notice as soon as they present proof of citizenship. They can even be reinstated at a polling place on Election Day.

Less than two hours after the news organizations sent the secretary of state’s advisory to Montgomery County, Howard-Elley was back on the rolls.

“I’m sorry that Montgomery County has to be shown the law to abide by it,” Howard-Elley said. She added that this election would have been the first time in more than 30 years she failed to cast a ballot for president. “I just hope they don’t do this to anybody else ever again because it’s not fair.”

Montgomery County elections administrator Suzie Harvey said her office had never had to deal with a situation like Howard-Elley’s, and while she likely saw the advisory when it was issued, she had forgotten about the specific guidance. She said her office worked quickly to reinstate Howard-Elley when the news organizations flagged the advisory and she is gratified that Howard-Elley will be able to vote.

“That would have been extremely tragic,” Harvey said.

Not every voter has Howard-Elley’s tenacity, or news organizations asking persistent questions about how their case was handled.

“Voting should not be so hard that you have to be a lawyer or have lawyer skills to be able to vote,” said Nina Perales, vice president of litigation at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

Perales said it would take “heroic efforts” by the average voter to research the election laws and advocate for their registration to be reinstated.

Even then, the decision would depend on how election officials in their county interpret laws and guidance.

Three county election officials gave different answers to the question of whether they would reinstate a voter in Howard-Elley’s situation, though all stressed they would try their best to follow the law.

One said the voter should be reinstated. The other two said they would likely reinstate the voter after the registration deadline only if the county had erred in some way.

Those differences give “voters in some counties fewer rights than voters in other counties,” said Emily Eby French, the policy director at Common Cause Texas, a nonprofit that advocates for voting access.

Howard-Elley said she is disturbed at how close she came to losing her ability to vote. If reporters hadn’t called her, Howard-Elley said, she might have been turned away at the polls.

She said she worries about whether other eligible voters are among those labeled as noncitizens and that Abbott should look into whether there are more U.S. citizens among them. The lifelong Republican said state and county officials need to be held accountable to ensure more U.S. citizens are not erroneously removed.

“The system is very flawed,” Howard-Elley said. “I feel really sad that we’re in a situation like this. You would think in 2024 we wouldn’t have issues like this.”

She intends to cast her ballot for Trump.

How to dispute your removal

If your voter registration is canceled because you failed to respond to a letter trying to confirm your citizenship, here’s what you can do:

Contact your county elections office before heading to the polls. Show proof of your citizenship and ask to be reinstated.

You can also share this 2021 advisory from the Texas secretary of state’s office on reinstating citizens to the voter rolls.

Common forms of documentation include a U.S. passport or certified birth certificate. See the full list of acceptable proof of citizenship in the advisory.

If you don’t find out until you arrive at the polls that you need to show proof of citizenship, that advisory still requires election officials to reinstate you immediately after you do so.

Contact the Texas secretary of state’s office for additional assistance.

Disclosure: Common Cause and the Texas secretary of state have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/10/29/texas-noncitizen-voter-roll-removal-mary-howard-elley/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

With lawsuits and recount petitions rising, some Texas elections seem to go on forever

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access. Sign up for its free newsletters here.

It has been 15 months since Democrat DaSean Jones was sworn in as a Harris County criminal district court judge. He’s presided over hundreds of cases since then. And he’ll be on the ballot again in November, this time for a seat on the Texas Supreme Court.

But there’s an asterisk on his 2022 election win: His opponent, Republican Tami Pierce, is still challenging the outcome in court, arguing that there were “improper or illegal votes that shouldn’t have been counted” and that the election was “plagued with mistakes.” Her case is awaiting a ruling from a Bexar County visiting judge.

It’s another example of a pattern officials and experts say they’re seeing around Texas in recent years: elections that just won’t end.

The November 2020 general election was easily the most litigious in recent history. But post-election legal challenges and recount petitions have been mounting ever since, experts say. And while there are no hard numbers, they say these challenges are becoming more common in lower-ballot elections around the state.

Some level of scrutiny is expected after elections. Texas law requires automatic recounts in some circumstances, including a tie, and it allows for challenges in very close elections.

But the challenges election officials are noticing lately are different. Many are coming from right-wing activists challenging specific aspects of how the election was conducted, and “throwing the kitchen sink” into their complaints, said Mimi Marziani, a political science and election law professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

“They’re not actually trying to have a different person elected,” Marziani said. “They’re trying to set some sort of precedent to destabilize free and fair elections.”

What if the result changes after a candidate takes office?

With the 2024 election just months away, Texas courts are still working through election challenges brought as far back as 2021. Winning candidates like Jones, meanwhile, have taken office but must contend with the uncertainty surrounding their authority, which experts say could diminish voters’ confidence.

Nearly all of these challenges have been dismissed, but as long as some are pending, they leave open the prospect that a court could replace the winning candidate, even well into the term of office.

Lawyers say such instances are rare, but that if that were to happen, the official actions taken by the original incumbent, such as rulings by an elected judge, should stand.

Candidates contesting the results of an election must meet a high evidentiary bar to succeed. A court will take a close look at the vote margin, and challengers must prove that there are illegal votes included in the vote tally, said Chad Dunn, a Texas attorney and election law expert — and enough of them to have shifted the outcome.

“You can’t say that ‘that kind of ballot is not lawful, this kind of ballot is not lawful,’” Dunn said. “The test is whether or not the person who voted was eligible to vote, and they were the person who voted.”

Challenges from past Texas elections linger

Pierce, who lost the 180th District Court judicial race in Harris County by fewer than 500 votes, declined to comment through her attorney, and Jones did not respond to a request for comment.

Pierce is among 21 losing Republican candidates in Harris County who challenged the results of the 2022 general election there. A judge overseeing those cases found that Harris County made errors, but there wasn’t enough evidence to order a new election, and he upheld the election results. Three of the candidates who challenged their results dropped their lawsuits before his ruling.

In Pierce’s case, which has the closest margin of votes according to published results, there was a two-day trial in Harris County last month, and a decision is pending.

Meanwhile, in separate proceedings, the outcome of a November 2021 election is still being disputed in court over the description of a proposed constitutional amendment that was on the ballot. Proposition 2, which voters approved, would allow counties to issue bonds to raise funds for transportation and infrastructure in underdeveloped areas.

Conservative groups, including Grassroots of America, claimed that the description of the proposal on the ballot was misleading to voters. A Travis County District Court ruled in favor of the groups, and after an appeal by the Texas Attorney General’s Office, the 7th Court of Appeals upheld the lower court’s ruling. The state has yet to respond to that decision. The measure is on hold pending a resolution of the case.

In another category of challenges, far-right voting fraud activists have filed a slew of lawsuits against counties, falsely claiming that the voting equipment they use is not properly certified. The Texas Supreme Court and lower Texas courts have dismissed some of the claims, but activists continue to bring them.

One lawsuit challenging the results of the November 2023 constitutional amendment election threatened to halt property tax cuts and increased pensions for retired teachers that Republicans championed during last year’s legislative session. Gov. Greg Abbott certified the results of the election on Dec. 4, allowing the constitutional amendments approved by voters to go into effect. In court filings, the Texas Attorney General’s Office said the governor was not prevented from certifying the results because the election challenges were procedurally flawed. A Travis County district judge hearing the challenge has yet to rule.

Recounts add more work

A rise in recount petitions is also creating new strains for election officials.

This year, after the March 5 primary election, losing Republican candidates in Dallas and Tarrant counties requested recounts. One of them, Barry Wernick, lost his bid to represent Texas House District 108 in Dallas County to incumbent state Rep. Morgan Meyer by more than 500 votes out of around 26,000 votes cast in the race. The recount found a difference of 15 votes in the race, not enough to change the outcome.

In Tarrant County, a recount in the Republican primary for constable in Precinct 1 found the results were accurate.

More recounts make it harder for election officials racing to meet state-mandated deadlines for certification. Depending on the race and jurisdiction size, a recount can take weeks to complete.

In many situations, the candidate who requests the recount must pay for it, unless the results of the recount change the outcome, which rarely happens. But election officials must provide space, time, and personnel to aid the recount, even if they’re in the midst of planning for the next election. In the first half of 2024, some election officials in the state are running five elections, one after another.

And if the results stand after the recount, “the individuals who called for the recount or paid for the recount or brought the court challenge are still not satisfied,” said Tammy Patrick, CEO for programs at the National Association of Election Officials. “And so it doesn’t really resolve the issue.”

Marziani says this year’s flood of election-related litigation and calls for recounts this year is only a fraction of what’s to come after the November presidential election.

“I do think that there are actors out there who are thinking about how to lay the foundation for election sabotage, and for overturning election results,” she said.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.