Accurate voter rolls are an essential component of trustworthy elections. The inverse is also true, and election after election, one party fights to keep the rolls dirty, making elections untrustworthy.
Generally speaking, there are three areas of focus for securing elections: machines, mail-in ballots, and voter rolls.
The newest of these is having its day in the sun: machine voting. Setting the ins and outs aside, criticism of the mechanism isn’t monopolized. Both Republicans and Democrats have viewed machines skeptically at varying times.
In the early 2000s, Democrats insisted that machines were rigged to secure election victories for George W. Bush. Now, the shoe is mainly on the other foot.
Will this revert if Republicans come to power for an extended season? Perhaps, but the point is that criticism has been circumstantial.
The second area of focus, mail-in ballots, is like machines. Both parties have questioned the security of voting by mail at various times.
Democrats, including Jimmy Carter and Jerry Nadler, famously called into question the security of voting by mail and called them susceptible to fraud.
During the 2020 election, mail-in balloting was expanded and used to “fortify” the election outcome for Joe Biden, according to TIME magazine.
Lawsuits questioning the integrity of 2020 mail ballots were ignored in Georgia and dismissed with strained legal reasoning in Arizona.
In 2024, the United States Postal Service union endorsed Kamala Harris for election, while the USPS has cautioned that the election outcome may depend on mail-in ballots.
Last week, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania ruled that the dates on mail ballots, when they were filled out and postmarked, need to match to be counted.
That’s a blow to would-be cheaters who might want to sit on ballots until the margin of victory is known before dropping them in the days following the election.
While that ruling is good for election security, recent rulings have been blows to trust that the election will be fair and free from fraud. Michigan made auditing elections more difficult and outlawed election boards from conducting fraud investigations.
The third and final broad area of concern regarding elections is voter roll maintenance. This is the only area of focus where Democrats and Republicans haven’t swapped roles.
Republicans advocate for rolls that exclude dead voters and non-citizens. Democrats have a long history of fighting even these efforts.
This dynamic is playing out in Texas again.
This cycle, Attorney General Ken Paxton has opened investigations into groups accused of registering non-citizens to vote on Texas state property, specifically outside DPS driver’s license offices.
Jolt, a non-profit participating in the program, has sued to stop Paxton’s investigation. They’ve also asked an increasingly weaponized DOJ to intervene.
Third parties have been warned by Paxton against sending out unsolicited voter registration forms. The warning was made before Harris and Bexar County planned to vote to use tax dollars to pay leftwing organizations for last-minute voter registration efforts. Harris backed down while Bexar went through funding the effort.
Meanwhile, in Tarrant County, the Jolt Initiative and Battleground Texas were blocked from registering voters inside county buildings by a vote of 4-1 last week.
Shortly after Paxton’s investigation into Jolt was launched, the Texas Secretary of State released voter roll maintenance figures, including removing non-citizens registered to vote.
Texans may report suspected election law violations to illegalvoting@oag.texas.gov.
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