Former state GOP chairman warns Texas going in wrong direction on election integrity

Former congressman and Texas Republican Party Chairman Allen West says he fears the Lone Star state is going in the wrong direction when it comes to election integrity.

"No, we're not securing our elections in Texas," West said during an interview Monday night on the Just the News TV show on Real America's Voice. "And right now, that's a big issue."

West cited three recent developments as cause for concern:

• The state legislature passed an election integrity bill that actually reduced the penalty for illegal voting from a felony to a misdemeanor, with some lawmakers unaware of the last-minute change.
• A state appeals court ruled the state attorney general could not unilaterally prosecute election law cases.
• An audit by the secretary of state in December found nearly 12,000 suspected foreigners had made it onto the state voter rolls. Noncitizens are ineligible to vote in Texas.

"We have a Republican-controlled legislature, of course, the governor and the lieutenant governor is Republican, but yet we downgraded voter fraud in the state of Texas by law from being a felony offense to a misdemeanor offense," West sad. "That's very concerning for a lot of people."

West said he is concerned about the recent appeals court ruling because it leaves election prosecutions in the hands of local district attorneys, which in big urban counties are supported by liberal ideologues.

And he said the recent discovery of noncitizens on the voter rolls showed the current screening procedures during Texas voter registration aren't working, while Democrats in Washington press forward with legislation to federalize election rules to, among other things, ban voter ID.

Foreigners on the voter rolls "should not happen," West said. "It should be zero. And I think that that's one of the things that concerns me about this voting rights act that the Democrats want to push, that they will outlaw voter roll registration all throughout the United States of America. And when you have 3 million illegal immigrants coming in, you don't want that to happen."