Texas AG Sues County for Voter Registration Program

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing one of the state's largest counties to stop it from using taxpayer money to help register voters.

Travis County, home to the City of Austin, hired a partisan third-party organization to identify unregistered voters without statutory authority, Paxton said.

Last month, the Travis County Commissioners Court hired a third-party vendor with taxpayer funds to operate a program that would identify residents who were unregistered to vote, Paxton said.

The company, Civic Government Solutions, is a subsidiary of a known partisan organization and was contracted to provide services that Travis County is not authorized by Texas law to perform, Paxton said.

Paxton said the program will create confusion, potentially facilitate fraud, and undermine public trust in the election process. 

"Travis County has blatantly violated Texas law by paying partisan actors to conduct unlawful identification efforts to track down people who are not registered to vote," said Paxton. "Programs like this invite fraud and reduce public trust in our elections. We will stop them and any other county considering such programs."

Travis County spokesman Hector Nieto told The Hill that the county was "proud of our outreach efforts" while remaining "steadfast in our responsibility to uphold the integrity of the voter registration process." 

"It is disappointing that any statewide elected official would prefer to sow distrust and discourage participation in the electoral process," Nieto said.

Paxton on Wednesday sued the Bexar County 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.

"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."

Paxton's lawsuit came 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."

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