Tipsheet

Texas County Ignores Paxton's Voter Registration Warning, Setting Up a Legal Battle With the AG

Leah Barkoukis
Leah Barkoukis  |  September 04, 2024 9:00 AM

Bexar County, Texas, defied a warning from Attorney General Ken Paxton on Tuesday, moving forward with a plan to mail voter registration forms to county residents.

Paxton sent warning letters on Monday to Bexar and Harris Counties saying that the proposal to send voter registration forms regardless of an individual’s eligibility is against the law. 

“The distribution of forms to unverified recipients could induce ineligible people—such as felons and noncitizens—to commit a crime by attempting to register to vote," the attorney general’s office said in a statement. "Further, Texas counties have no statutory authority to print and mail state voter registration forms, making the proposal fundamentally illegal." 

The 3-1 Commissioners Court vote sets up a legal battle with Paxton, who vowed to "use all available legal means to stop" Bexar County. 

Rebuffing those claims, Bexar County Commissioners Court approved a $393,000 outreach contract with Civic Government Solutions following three hours of fervent discussion at Tuesday’s court meeting. Local GOP activists spent more than an hour blasting the deal as an illegal waste of taxpayer money and insisting it would be used to disproportionately register Democrats, citing past comments from the firm’s leaders indicating support for Democratic candidates.

Democratic commissioners, backed by a county legal official, said Paxton’s legal threats were misleading and unfounded. And the firm’s chief executive said the outreach efforts would be strictly nonpartisan — a requirement of the contract, he said — and pose little risk of registering noncitizens. (Texas Tribune)

Paxton also warned Harris County, which is considering a similar plan.

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“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,” said Paxton. “These counties’ attempts to do so after the Biden-Harris Administration has allowed millions of illegal aliens to enter the country are especially troubling.”