You may have heard already that more than one million voters were recently purged from Texas‘ voting rolls. While state and federal regulations require voter roll maintenance, Governor Greg Abbott took it a step further when he passed a legislative overhaul in 2021, and critics believe was meant to sow doubt about the validity of the voting process. 

The good news for Texans living abroad - you can ensure you are eligible to vote in November by sending in a Federal Post Card Application (FPCA). The FPCA serves as both ballot request and registration if necessary. Go to www.votefromabroad.org TODAY to complete your ballot request! Check to see if your request was accepted using the TX FPCA Ballot Tracker. 

Among those removed from the rosters, nearly half were voters who had died, but an astonishing 463,000 voters were placed on a suspense list. According to the Texas Tribune, “If the voter does not update their information and does not vote for two election cycles, they’re then removed from the rolls.” Conservative groups, led by the right-wing group True the Vote, have submitted tens of thousands of voters to be removed from the rolls — largely based on out-of-date databases — and it is complicating the process already in place to review voter registrations. These groups have been active in other battleground states, such as Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, and their goal is to take away the voices of those who disagree with them. This is the antithesis of democracy and must be stopped.  

Additionally, approximately 6,500 “noncitizens” were identified by Abbott’s team. These types of claims are not new. In 2019, Texas officials flagged an estimated 95,000 voters as “noncitizens”, despite the fact many of them were actually naturalized citizens. In a report written by a federal judge in Georgia about True the Vote’s voter challenges, the judge asserted, “These efforts are based on unsubstantiated and false claims that the rolls are replete with dead voters, voters register in other locations, and, most recently, noncitizens. Furthermore, they falsely imply that any inaccuracy in the voter rolls equates to or otherwise enables voter fraud. In reality, voter registration rolls are being continuously updated by election officials.”

Greg Abbott and his cronies do not have the right to take your rights away. To ensure that you are those you love are able to vote, here’s what you can do:

1. Contact your Texas family, friends, and neighbors and encourage them to update their registration information, especially if they have moved since the last election. 

2. Have them update their voter registration information by October 7 at votetexas.gov.

3. Voters on the suspense list can cast a ballot at the polls after filling out a Statement of Residence form. 

4. Contact your family and friends in other battleground states and encourage them to check their registrations. 

5. Send your US friends and family living outside the US to www.votefromabroad.org to get set to vote!

6. Vote BLUE down the ballot!