Texas Secretary Of State Resigns After Bungled Probe Into Voters’ Citizenship

Secretary of State David Whitley, left, arrives for his confirmation hearing, Thursday, Feb. 7, 2019, in Austin, Texas, where he addressed the backlash surrounding Texas' efforts to find noncitizens on voter rolls. Whitley denies his office made mistakes over a list of 95,000 voters whose U.S. citizenship was called into question but included thousands of wrongly flagged names. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
Secretary of State David Whitley, left, arrives for his confirmation hearing, Thursday, Feb. 7, 2019, in Austin, Texas, where he addressed the backlash surrounding Texas' efforts to find noncitizen voters on voter ro... Secretary of State David Whitley, left, arrives for his confirmation hearing, Thursday, Feb. 7, 2019, in Austin, Texas, where he addressed the backlash surrounding Texas' efforts to find noncitizen voters on voter rolls. (AP Photo/Eric Gay) MORE LESS
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David Whitley, the Texas secretary of state, resigned Monday just before he would have been booted anyway after failing to secure Senate confirmation to stay on the job.

According to the Austin-American Statesman, despite unanimous Republican support, all Democrats opposed the confirmation due to Whitley’s leadership of an investigation into the citizenship status of voters which resulted in multiple lawsuits and a court settlement freezing the probe.

Whitley had identified 100,000 people on the rolls that he thought were ineligible to vote, over half of whom had cast a ballot since 1996, and referred them to the Texas attorney general for possible prosecution.

It was soon revealed that many of the voters were naturalized citizens fully within their rights to cast a ballot. Whitley’s office later admitted that they knew some naturalized voters may have been on the list.

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  1. Not shameless enough to be a GOPer.

  2. This was not just a “bungled probe,” it was a felony criminal conspiracy to deny citizens their civil rights in violation of 18 USC 242. Whitley should be prosecuted and sent to prison.

  3. Check the footnotes. Said Statute does not apply when the citizen is a Democrat.

  4. Why do these guys always go for the Josef Goebbels look?

    (Sorry to Godwin so early in the thread.)

  5. …children often look like their parents and grandparents…

Continue the discussion at forums.talkingpointsmemo.com

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