New "Use It or Lose It" Voter Bill in Texas Senate

The headline below caught our attention in the Spring of 2023 from the Texas Standard:

Texas could be the next state to pass "Use It or Lose It" voter bill, voters could be removed from the rolls if they miss consecutive elections.
By Michael Marks & Marissa Greene, April 21, 2023

The bill passed the Texas Senate in April 2023, but did not see action in the Texas House.

This was the recorded party line vote by our elected Texas Senators: Yeas 19, Nays 12.

Yeas: Bettencourt, Birdwell, Campbell, Creighton, Flores, Hall, Hancock, Huffman, Hughes, King, Kolkhorst, Middleton, Nichols, Parker, Paxton, Perry, Schwertner, Sparks, Springer.

Nays: Alvarado, Blanco, Eckhardt, Gutierrez, Hinojosa, Johnson, LaMantia, Menéndez, Miles, West, Whitmire, Zaffirini.

This bill will add a Supplemental Process to the existing practice of sending notices to Active voters to update their voter record when they move. This bill will send the Active voter a notice because they haven't voted in 25 months. If they don't vote in the next two federal elections (4 years) they will be cancelled/purged from the voter record. The voter will need to reregister.

Texas already purges about half a million voters every two years from the suspense process. Suspense voters are now 11.8% of the total voters registered (see chart below).

Our research indicates that this " Use It or Lose It" bill will put close to 500,000 voters in Collin, Dallas, Denton and Tarrant counties at high risk of receiving a notification and being put in Suspense status and on the path to cancellation.

And one out of five voters in the four Texas counties are likely to be at risk to be targeted for suspension status under this election bill.

Here is the research document: "Use It or Lose It" Texas Voter Bill Analysis.

In March 2024, voters in suspense were 11.8% of total registered voters, up from 10.3% in 2022.

Voting in November will remove your suspense status.