By Kanishka Singh
(Reuters) – Texas’s Republican Lawyer Basic Ken Paxton sued Democratic U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration on Tuesday, saying the federal authorities was not offering the assistance it wanted in assessing the citizenship standing of a few of its registered voters.
The lawsuit filed within the U.S. District Court docket for the Western District of Texas accuses the Biden administration and particularly the Division of Homeland Safety of refusing to assist it decide the citizenship standing of 450,000 of the 17.9 million registered voters within the state.
It’s already unlawful for noncitizens to vote in U.S. federal elections and state and personal evaluations have turned up only a few situations of them doing so. Nonetheless, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his allies have argued that enormous numbers of noncitizens may vote within the Nov. 5 election, when he faces Democrat Kamala Harris.
The Division of Homeland Safety didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Trump has falsely claimed that his 2020 loss to Biden resulted from widespread voter fraud.
Paxton’s workplace mentioned he despatched a letter earlier this month asking the U.S. authorities to confirm the citizenship standing of people that could also be unlawfully registered to vote in Texas by Oct. 19. His workplace mentioned he proceeded with a lawsuit when his request was not answered.
His workplace mentioned there have been almost half one million voters whose citizenship standing has not been verified however acknowledged that almost all of these voters had been possible residents and therefore eligible to vote.
“While the majority of the voters on the list are likely citizens who are eligible to vote, Texans have no way of knowing whether or not any of the voters on the list are non-citizens who are ineligible to vote without additional information,” his workplace mentioned.
