Largest Texas Newspaper Accuses Greg Abbott of ‘Beyond Reckless’ Behavior

The Houston Chronicle lambasted Texas Governor Greg Abbott in a recent editorial for what it calls “beyond reckless” rhetoric surrounding election integrity.

The newspaper, the largest in the Lone Star State by circulation, accused the governor of deliberately stoking unfounded fears about the security of the state’s electoral process.

The Houston Chronicle‘s editorial board, in a Wednesday op-ed entitled, “Texas’ voter roll purge is routine practice. So why is Greg Abbott crying voter fraud?” took direct aim at Abbott’s August announcement that over 1.1 million people have been removed from Texas voter rolls since September 2021.

This purge, which Abbott framed as an effort to protect elections from illegal voting, includes individuals who have moved out of state, are deceased, or are not U.S. citizens.

“The timing of these actions appears to have a clear intent: to sow confusion, scare people from voting and suppress turnout,” the editorial states, which characterizes the governor’s claims as part of a “rhetorical pattern” that has “played out too often—with no substantial evidence of a large-scale problem.”

Abbott’s office reported that among those removed were over 6,500 noncitizens, more than 6,000 voters with felony convictions, and over 457,000 deceased individuals. The governor also stated that approximately 1,930 of the removed noncitizens had a voting history and had been referred to the state’s attorney general’s office for investigation and potential legal action.

The newspaper’s editorial board took particular issue with Abbott’s speculation about potential criminal schemes involving noncitizen voters.

“As a former trial judge, state Supreme Court justice and attorney general, Abbott knows better than most that speculating about criminal plots, without any evidence, and when none of these folks have even been charged with a crime, is beyond reckless,” the editorial board wrote.

Newsweek contacted Abbott’s office via online form and email on Saturday afternoon for comment.

The newspaper’s editorial board draws parallels between Abbott’s rhetoric and the “Big Lie” propagated by former President Donald Trump and his allies following his loss in the 2020 election to Joe Biden. The newspaper suggests that rather than learning from the dangerous consequences of such claims, which culminated in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, Abbott and his allies have “helped refashion Trump’s Big Lie into a new buzzword: ‘election integrity.'”

Abbott’s announcement comes in the wake of the state’s Senate Bill 1 (SB 1), a controversial voting law passed in September 2021. Critics have denounced SB 1 as part of a broader effort by Republican-led states to introduce new voting restrictions following the 2020 election.

In August 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas ruled that portions of SB 1 violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964, finding that it disenfranchised eligible voters by rejecting mail ballots for minor paperwork errors.

The Houston Chronicle‘s editorial board also criticized Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for his office’s recent raid on members of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), a Latino civil rights organization, over allegations of voter fraud. The newspaper points out that despite Paxton’s aggressive pursuit of voter fraud cases, his office’s election fraud unit closed only six cases between September 2022 to present day.

Voting rights advocates have long argued that claims of widespread voter fraud are often used as pretexts for implementing policies that disproportionately affect minority communities and other traditionally Democratic-leaning constituencies.

The newspaper’s editorial board appears to support this view, suggesting that Abbott’s recent statements are part of a long history of voter suppression tactics in Texas dating back to the Reconstruction era.

“Here’s the truth every Texan should know before voting: there are multiple checks in place to ensure that everyone who casts a ballot in Texas does so legally. Anyone who tells you otherwise, even the governor of our state, is spinning a tall tale,” the Houston Chronicle concluded its editorial.