Rep. Taylor appointed to voter fraud group

Rep. Larry Taylor, R-Friendswood, has been chosen to serve on a newly formed “election integrity task force” aimed at ensuring that Texas elections are free from fraud.

Conservatives in Texas have pushed for photo identification requirements to eliminate voter fraud, while Democrats and others have criticized such measures as being equivalent to a poll tax that would dissuade poor and minority voters from going to the polls.

“Anytime an illegal vote is cast, it cancels a legitimate vote and disenfranchises a citizen’s vote,” Taylor said in statement.

He said the task force is spurred in part by nearly a year of research by a conservative think tank.

The Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute found at least 6,731 cases of noncitizens who registered to vote in Harris, Dallas, Bexar, Tarrant and El Paso counties, Taylor said.

They were discovered when they were called for jury duty and claimed noncitizenship as an excuse to avoid service, he said.

In the last legislative session, two bills requiring photo identification stalled in the state Senate.

The formation of the task force follows a report from the state auditor saying the state should improve its voter registration database. It said thousands of voters could be ineligible, but it did not identify any instances of people casting votes illegally.