Paxton warns Bexar, Harris County officials not to violate election law

(The Center Square) – Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton warned election officials in Bexar and Harris counties to not mail out voter registration forms en masse to residents in violation of state law.

If they didn’t comply, he said he will sue and stop them in court.

“It is unlawful and reckless for counties to use taxpayer dollars to indiscriminately send voter registration forms with no consideration of the recipients’ eligibility and without any statutory authority to do so,” Paxton said late Monday night in a statement. “These counties’ attempts to do so after the Biden-Harris Administration has allowed millions of illegal aliens to enter the country are especially troubling.

“It is more important than ever that we maintain the integrity of our voter rolls and ensure only eligible voters decide our elections,” he said, after the governor, secretary of state, and he last month issued a series of warnings about election fraud and launched a tipline for illegal voting.

The Bexar County Commissioners Court is scheduled Tuesday to convene to consider using nearly $400,000 of taxpayer money to pay a third-party vendor to print and distribute voter registration forms to unregistered residents living in the county, including in the Democratic-controlled city of San Antonio.

Last week, the Harris County Commissioners Court was scheduled to meet to push through a $200,000 taxpayer funded “voter outreach” plan. After state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, found out, he said they were trying to circumvent new laws that went into effect that he authored to prohibit initiatives like this.

Agenda item #400would have authorized Harris County to send “unrequested voter registration applications to addresses without current voter registrations, which results in very high probability of registering non-citizens to vote,” Bettencourt said in a statement.

This was similar to the county’s attempt to use a third-party vendor to mail out two million unsolicited absentee ballot application forms in 2020, which was blocked after Paxton sued to stop them. The Texas Supreme Court agreed with Paxton and squashed it.

The agenda item was later pulled after Secretary of State Jane Nelson released an audit report of extensive voter irregularities in the county. She also announced her office would be involved in overseeing its election process before, during and after the November election, The Center Square reported.

Distributing voter registration forms to unverified recipients “could induce ineligible people – such as felons and noncitizens – to commit a crime by attempting to register to vote,” Paxton said. “Texas counties have no statutory authority to print and mail state voter registration forms, making the proposal fundamentally illegal.”

Voter registration forms are provided by the Secretary of State’s Office, which also issued a series of warnings about voting irregularities, noncitizens voting, and purged more than 1.1 million ineligible voters from the voter rolls, The Center Square reported.

In a letter to the Bexar County judge and commissioners, Paxton said their plan to “spend hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to mail unsolicited voter registration applications to an untold number of Bexar County residents regardless of whether those residents have requested such an application or are even eligible to vote” is “at best, ill-advised.” The plan “potentially confuses residents of Bexar County about whether they are eligible to vote,” he said, adding that “At worst, it may induce the commission of a crime by encouraging individuals who are ineligible to vote to provide false information on the form.

“Either way, it is illegal, and if you move forward with this proposal, I will use all available legal means to stop you.”

In a letter to the Harris County judge and commissioners, he made the same argument but also pointed out that he previously sued the county in 2020 and won. The same reasoning would be used for a lawsuit against the county again, he said. “I am confident the courts will agree with me that the proposals currently under consideration exceed your authority.”

He told both counties that their actions were “particularly troubling this election cycle” because “Biden-Harris administration open border policies have saddled Texas – and the entire country – with a wave of illegal immigration that has resulted in ballooning noncitizen populations across our State.

“It is more important than ever that we maintain the integrity of our voter rolls and ensure only eligible voters decide our elections. Your proposal does the opposite by indiscriminately inviting county residents to register to vote regardless of their eligibility. I urge you to abandon this proposal. If you do not, I will see you in court.”