Raising fresh concerns about the intentions behind President Donald Trump’s now-defunct “Commission on Election Integrity,” newly released documents reveal a “deeply disturbing” request that Texas officials flag records for all voters with Hispanic surnames, according to the Washington Post.
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The commission—which was launched following Trump’s unsubstantiated claims about rampant fraud and faced challenges from several states and advocacy groups—paid Texas $3,500 in September for nearly 50 million state voter records. The Post reports a commission researcher “checked a box on two Texas public voter data request forms explicitly asking for the ‘Hispanic surname flag notation,’ to be included in information sent to the voting commission.”
Although the commission disbanded following several legal challenges and the state’s records were never sent, Texas was expected to provide “lists of voters who were active, those with canceled registrations, and those with an outdated or incorrect address on file; and a list of those who voted in the past six general elections from 2006 through 2016,” and “flags for the Hispanic surnames would be in the lists.”
Justin Levitt, a professor and election law expert who oversaw voting rights for the Obama administration’s Department of Justice, told the Associated Press the “deeply disturbing” request could suggest the commission was searching for non-citizens on Texas’ voter rolls, and noted “that—I cannot say more emphatically—is the sort of discriminatory racial profiling that the constitution forbids in official government action.”
Texas has one of the largest Hispanic populations in the country, second only to California. About a quarter of Texas’ more than 15 million voters have Hispanic surnames, and the state identifies Hispanic voters in order to provide them with bilingual election notices, according to a spokesman for Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos.
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