Judge tosses Ken Paxton’s lawsuit targeting Texas county's voter registration effort

A state district court judge on Monday denied a request by Attorney General Ken Paxton to block a Bexar County plan to mail voter registration forms to county residents ahead of the November election, saying the request was moot.

Bexar County attorneys argued in a hearing before Judge Antonia Arteaga on Monday that there was no reason for the court to issue an injunction because the forms were mailed last week, according to the San Antonio Report. Paxton’s office submitted an updated request before the hearing asking that no additional letters be sent out.

“The target of the mailing — qualified individuals who recently moved to or within Bexar County — have received those forms, and perhaps have already returned them,” said Bexar County Assistant Criminal District Attorney Robert W. Piatt III.

Ryan Kercher, deputy chief of the special litigation division in the attorney general’s office, argued that the plan could result in ineligible people registering to vote. Paxton appealed the decision on Monday evening, claiming Bexar officials "expedited" the mail out to take place before the hearing.

Voter registration applications are returned to county offices and are reviewed to confirm eligibility.

Here’s what you need to know.

The background: Bexar County officials voted on Sept. 3 to mail voter registration forms to eligible county residents, defying a threat by Paxton to “use all available legal means” to shut down the program. The Bexar County Commissioners Court voted 3-1 to approve the $393,000 outreach contract with Civic Government Solutions, an outside firm.

Paxton sued Bexar County officials in state district court on Sept. 4, seeking an emergency order to block the program. But his office later did not show up at court to request the order, according to News 4 San Antonio.

The lawsuit is part of an ongoing feud between the state’s Republican leaders and Texas’ largest counties, which are run by Democrats, over initiatives to proactively send registration applications to people who are eligible but unregistered to vote. Harris County leaders weighed a similar plan but ultimately did not follow through.

Paxton warned Harris and Bexar counties, which include Houston and San Antonio respectively, against such efforts on Sept. 2, claiming they would run afoul of state law and risk adding noncitizens to the voter rolls. Paxton separately sued Travis County, which includes Austin, for a similar issue.

Why Texas sued: In its lawsuit, Texas argued that counties do not have the authority to send out unsolicited voter registration applications and that Bexar County officials failed to go through a competitive bidding process before awarding the contract.

Local Republican activists slammed the Bexar County deal as an illegal waste of taxpayer money that would disproportionately register Democratic voters, citing past comments from the contracted firm’s leaders indicating support for Democratic candidates.

In a letter to Bexar county officials, Paxton added that the outreach proposal was “particularly troubling this election cycle” because of the uptick in illegal border crossings under President Joe Biden, whose policies he said have “saddled Texas” with “ballooning noncitizen populations.”

Paxton, without evidence, has routinely accused Democrats of adopting more liberal immigration policies to draw on noncitizen votes to win elections. He falsely told conservative talk show host Glenn Beck in August that Democrats’ plan was to “tell the cartels, ‘Get people here as fast as possible, as many as possible.’”

Only U.S. citizens are permitted to vote under both federal and state law, and data shows that instances of noncitizen voting are exceedingly rare.

What Bexar County says: Democratic commissioners, backed by a county legal official, called Paxton’s legal threats misleading and unfounded.

Civic Government Solutions’ chief executive, Jeremy Smith, said that the outreach efforts would be strictly nonpartisan — as required by the contract — and pose little risk of registering noncitizens.

He said that the company uses a mix of public records and county data to identify people who could have recently moved and are unregistered, and he noted the checks in place to prevent noncitizens from registering to vote.

When voter registrars receive applications, they send them to the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, where they are checked for eligibility against Department of Public Safety and Social Security Administration data. In addition, local voter registrars work with their county district attorney’s office to check citizenship status using responses from jury summons questionnaires.

Broader impact: The lawsuit was the latest in a series of moves by Republican leaders in Texas who say they are trying to keep the state’s election systems and voter rolls secure ahead of the highly charged November elections.

Gov. Greg Abbott announced in late August that Texas officials had removed roughly 1 million people from its voter rolls since 2021 — though election experts noted that such maintenance is a routine part of complying with state and federal law, and warned that Abbott’s framing of the action could be used to undermine trust in elections.

Abbott’s office said the names scrapped from the voter rolls included more than 6,500 noncitizens who shouldn’t have been registered, and about 1,930 of those had a voting history. Voter watchdog and voting rights groups have questioned the figure, noting that Texas has incorrectly flagged people as noncitizens in the past.

Paxton’s office also recently conducted a series of raids as part of an investigation into alleged vote harvesting in Frio, Atascosa and Bexar counties, a move the League of United Latin American Citizens cast as an effort to “suppress the Latino vote through intimidation.” In addition, Paxton has probed what appear to be unsubstantiated claims that migrants were registering to vote outside a state drivers license facility west of Fort Worth.

A group of Democratic state lawmakers asked the Justice Department last week to investigate the recent spate of election-related actions, saying they were “sowing fear and will suppress voting” among communities of color. On Sept. 4, five Democrats from Texas’ congressional delegation joined the chorus of calls for federal action — among them U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia of Houston, who argued for “a swift and thorough investigation.”

Disclosure: The Texas Secretary of State has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/09/16/ken-paxton-bexar-county-voter-registration-lawsuit/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.