Texas Democrats force out state elections chief who led botched voter-roll purge

Texas Secretary of State David Whitley resigned on Monday, right before the Texas Senate gaveled out of session without confirming him. Confirming gubernatorial nominees is usually perfunctory, but the Senate's 12 Democrats banded together to block Whitley's confirmation after his office flagged about 98,000 potential non-citizen registered voters, many of whom were actually naturalized U.S. citizens. Gov. Greg Abbott (R) had appointed Whitley, a longtime aide, as secretary of state in mid-December, and he would have been immediately forced out of office when the Senate adjourned without confirming him.

Whitley's office quietly acknowledged within days that its list of 98,000 registered voters was flawed, with almost a quarter of the names included in error — including a Democratic senator's staffer. A federal judge halted the review in late February, and state officials ended the process in April as part of a legal settlement that cost Texas taxpayers $450,000 to cover costs and attorney fees for naturalized citizens threatened with expulsion from voter rolls. Abbott and the Senate's 19 Republican senators stood behind Whitley, but a two-thirds majority — 21 senators — was needed to confirm him.

"The blocking of Whitley's confirmation is a surprising show of strength from Senate Democrats, who have been on the losing side of a Republican supermajority in the chamber for several years and have been mocked by political observers as a doormat for the state's Republican leaders," The Dallas Morning News notes. Democrats flipped enough seats in November to end the GOP's supermajority.

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"The reality is that Democrats showed solidarity on that issue because of Whitley's position of voter suppression," state Sen. Royce West (D) said Monday, after the Senate adjourned. "That was the issue. It was not that he was not a good person — he seemed like he was a great person — but not the secretary of state, especially concerning the issues the secretary of state has to deal with as it relates to voting."