Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed suit Wednesday against one county's commissioners court after it voted to enact a program to mail out voter registration applications to residents whether or not they have requested the applications or are eligible to vote.
Paxton, a Republican, filed a suit against the Bexar County Commissioners court seeking an injunction to prevent what he called an "unlawful program" from starting.
The program allows the county to hire a third-party vendor, using taxpayer funds, to send out the voter registration forms to unregistered voters, Paxton warned in a statement.
"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," he said. "Further, Texas counties have no statutory authority to print and mail state voter registration forms, making the proposal fundamentally illegal."
His lawsuit comes after he sent letters to officials in Bexar and Harris counties, the two most densely populated in the state, threatening to sue them if they tried to institute the program.
"Despite being warned against adopting this blatantly illegal program that would spend taxpayer dollars to mail registration applications to potentially ineligible voters, Bexar County has irresponsibly chosen to violate the law," Paxton said Wednesday. "This program is completely unlawful and potentially invites election fraud. It is a crime to register to vote if you are ineligible."
The Bexar County complaint names Election Administrator Jacquelyn Callanen; Judge Peter Sakai; and Commissioners Rebeca Clay-Flores, Justin Rodriguez, Grant Moody, and Tommy Calvert.
The Bexar County Commissioners Court voted 3-1 Tuesday to approve the outreach contract, priced at $393,000, with Civic Government Solutions, The Texas Tribune reported.
Local Republicans spent more than an hour at the meeting arguing against the agreement, calling it illegal and a waste of taxpayer money.
They also insisted the move will disproportionately register Democrats, presenting comments from the company's officials that supported Democrat candidates.
The Democrats on the county commissioners' board, who were backed by a county legal official, called Paxton's threats unfounded and misleading.
Further, Jeremy Smith, the chief executive for Civic Government Solutions said outreach efforts will be nonpartisan, as required by contract, and do not pose a great risk of registering noncitizens to vote.
Paxton, in his letters to Bexar and Harris counties, said his office was successful in 2020 in blocking Harris County from sending out unsolicited applications for mail-in ballots, but Larry Roberson, chief of the civil division at the Bexar County District Attorney's Office, said the cases in 2020 and 2024 are "two very different circumstances."
He pointed out registration applications are made widely available in public locations such as post offices, but state law restricts who can send applications to vote by mail.