Texas' election chief resigns after voter citizenship flub

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The embattled Texas elections chief who questioned the U.S. citizenship of nearly 100,000 people resigned Monday ahead of being forced out of office, stepping down as Republicans went home to defend their vulnerable majority in 2020 rather than try forcing a late vote to save Gov. Greg Abbott's nominee.

Secretary of State David Whitley never received a confirmation vote for his post before the Texas Legislature gaveled out for two years. It was a quiet end to an unusually mild five months in the Capitol that for a decade has been a battlefield of culture wars and bare-knuckled conservatism.

Republicans in gun-friendly Texas even quietly went around the National Rifle Association before going home, setting up a test for Abbott on whether he will veto a $1 million public safety campaign for gun storage.

Abbott publicly kept up hopes for Whitley until the end, refusing to rule out just hours before Monday's deadline that his hand-picked elections chief might hang onto his job. He said the state Senate had "fought hard" for his nominee.

But Whitley's fate had appeared all but sealed for months. Democrats blocked a vote on his nomination after Whitley's office led a botched scouring of voter rolls in January that misidentified scores of people as non-citizens, set off questions from Congress and led to the state settling a federal lawsuit.

Whitley did not address the flubbed voter search in his resignation letter to Abbott.

"Working alongside the employees in the secretary of state's office, county elections officials, and representatives of our #1 trading partner, Mexico, has been my distinct honor and privilege," Whitley wrote, according to a letter obtained by local media.

Democrats for months have said Whitley lost their trust and resisted...