BELL COUNTY, Texas (KXXV) — A Bell County spokesperson confirming with 25 News only two people of their original 42 registered voters that were under question as being "noncitizen' voters showed proof of citizenship and they did so by showing their passports.
Watch the full story here:
Thirty-nine registrations were canceled and one request for citizenship was labeled as 'send back to sender' and was mailed back to Bell County.
This comes after more than 2,700 potential "noncitizen" voters were identified by the Texas Secretary of State's Office back in October. In a statement at the time, Texas S.O.S Office said they compared the state's voter registration list against federal citizenship data.
Bell County officials told 25 News' Bobby Poitevint these cancellations doesn’t mean those people were non U.S. citizens but they just didn’t respond to the request to provide U.S. citizenship.
Bell County did have the most voter registrations under question in our coverage area.
At the time of the S.O.S announcement in October, 25 News took a deeper look at the completed list and found that over 100 'potential' illegal voters were identified in Central Texas.
The Secretary of States Office responding to my request for updates and said there’s currently a pause on removing any of those potential non-citizen voters from voter rolls right now sighting the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which puts a pause on removing registrations 90 days out from a federal election. In this case referring to the March 3rd primaries.
You can read both full statements from the S.O.S Office below:
We are working with our counties to determine the results of these investigations and will be providing additional information and next steps on this issue once we are no longer under a list maintenance moratorium.
The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 imposes a list maintenance moratorium for 90 days before a federal election. During the moratorium, voter registrars must pause any programs that systematically remove the names of ineligible voters from the official list of registered voters, with the exception of voters who voluntarily cancel their voter registration, voters who are deceased, and voters who are finally convicted of a felony or adjudicated mentally incapacitated without the right to vote.
We also reached back out to Brazos County to get an update on their numbers but we haven't heard back.
