Dallas County has asked a federal court to drop its top elections official from a lawsuit filed by the League of United Latin American Citizens.
Dallas district attorneys recently filed a motion to remove Elections Administrator Paul Adams from the suit, arguing that he "has not violated any federal or state law, and has complied with the procedures set out in Texas Election Code."
LULAC, Texas LULAC, LULAC's Dallas chapter and Common Cause alleged in a federal lawsuit that Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson and elections administrators across the state violated the National Voter Registration Act.
The lawsuit, filed in March, says that Texas adopted a “troubling voter purge program that relies on unvetted, outdated citizenship data to remove voters from rolls in ways that are discriminatory and non-uniform across counties.”
The voter purge program in question is the process Nelson implemented last October, which compared registered Texas voters against the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database.
LULAC said in its complaint that the state, and by extension local counties, relied on outdated or unreliable data that can incorrectly identify voters — especially naturalized U.S. citizens — as noncitizens.
More than 2,700 voters were identified as "potential noncitizens."
Nearly a quarter of them are from North Texas — 277 from Dallas County and 338 from Collin, Denton and Tarrant counties, according to Secretary of State data.
Elections officials from those counties were also named in the lawsuit.
Other Texas counties with high numbers of voters who were flagged included 362 from Harris County, 201 in Bexar County and 165 in El Paso County.
Brazoria County's county clerk was dismissed from the suit last month, while Collin County Elections Administrator Kaleb Breaux and Secretary of State Jane Nelson have also filed motions to be dropped.
Nelson announced June 2 that she would resign effective July 17 — seven months before the end of her term.
Dallas County's filing to dismiss Adams says he is "not empowered or authorized to change Texas or federal law regarding voter verification processes or control the processes adopted by the Texas Secretary of State."
Like other Texas election administrators, the filing says, he "has no control over the state statutory scheme which governs their actions, the processes by which the Texas Secretary of State compiled her list of potential ineligible voters, and the instructions which Secretary Nelson gave to Counties in her 2025 directive."
No evidence has shown that any Dallas County voters were denied voting eligibility, though more than 100 notices were sent to state-flagged voters in October without investigating their citizenship status, according to the district attorneys' dismissal motion.
Got a tip? Email Marina Trahan Martinez at mmartinez@kera.org. You can follow Marina at @HisGirlHildy.
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