Texas Democrats force resignation of voter-suppressing Texas secretary of state

Whitely purged 100,000 voters from a list of people who had at some time identified themselves as non-citizens, the vast majority of whom had been naturalized before they registered. The state was sued by voting rights groups, was forced to settle, then scrapped the flawed list. As part of the settlement, it is coordinating with Latino voting and civil rights rights groups to make sure this doesn't happen again.

Whitley's resignation letter didn't mention any of this. "To have your trust," Whitley wrote to Abbott, "goes beyond what I ever dreamed of as a kid growing up in a small South Texas community." He also has the trust of Donald Trump, who didn't just tout Whitley's claims, but exaggerated them. "58,000 non-citizens voted in Texas, with 95,000 non-citizens registered to vote," he tweeted in January, saying that was just "the tip of the iceberg" in "rampant" voter fraud.