New survey looks at Texans' attitudes about voting integrity at the ballot box

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- A new survey found a split among Texans over which is more important to our elections: voter integrity or voter access.

The TSU Barbara Jordan Public Policy Research and Survey Center asked the question: What is more important? Stopping voter fraud and illegal immigrants from voting or making sure eligible citizens aren't denied the right to vote-the answer was split right down the middle. Mark Jones is the coauthor of the survey.

"They aren't mutually exclusive but tend to operate on a continuum," Jones said. "The more you prioritize election integrity, the more you restrict ballot access, and the more you expand ballot access, the more you undermine election integrity."

The survey also specifically asked about fraud and found that 35% believe there is some voter fraud. 30% think there is very little, but 24% believe there is a great deal of voter fraud.

The survey found that, among the Silent, Boomer, and so-called Millennial generations, a majority found integrity to be the more important issue. For Gen X and Gen Z, it was voting access.

As for political ideology, 80% of Republicans chose integrity - nearly nine in 10 Democrats chose access, as did a slim majority of self-described independent voters.

"While there is very little actual election fraud in the United States, there is a perception, especially among Republican voters, that fraud is a major problem," Jones said. "In part because President Trump played up the issue of fraud as one of the reasons why he lost the 2020 election, and Republican elected officials, because of the emphasis placed on this issue by the president and others, have passed legislation combating election fraud."

ABC13 looked at the numbers-using a database from the conservative Heritage Foundation once presented to Congress, and found that in the last 20 years, in Texas, there were just 75 criminal convictions for voter fraud. A third of those were for the fraudulent use of absentee ballots. But not one conviction was for a non-resident or a dead person casting a ballot illegally.

To put those 75 cases in perspective - during the same time period - more than 123 million Texans cast ballots in statewide elections.