Controversy Surrounding Bexar County Voter Registration Proposal
The proposal was approved by the Bexar County Commissioners Court at its Tuesday meeting.
SAN ANTONIO — This article includes reporting by The Texas Tribune.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, continuing a crusade against what he deems potentially illegal voting-related practices in the months leading up to the November election, has now set his sights on Bexar County.
Wednesday, Paxton said he has sued Bexar County Commissioners Court after it voted to approve a proposal that funds the printing and mailing of voter registration forms “to unregistered voters in locations based on targeting agreed to by the county.”
This comes after a letter Paxton sent to Commissioners Court Monday which criticized the proposal and threatened to file a lawsuit. Paxton appears to have followed through on those threats, according to a news release Wednesday.
“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,” said Attorney General Paxton in the Wednesday release. “This program is completely unlawful and potentially invites election fraud. It is a crime to register to vote if you are ineligible.”
In order to be eligible to vote in Texas, residents must be a U.S. citizen; live in the county where they applied to register to vote; and be at least 18 years old on Election Day. Convicted felons aren’t allowed to vote until they have completed their sentence and any probation periods, nor can those deemed by a court to be mentally incapacitated register.
Paxton said those who find a voter registration form in the mail as a result of the county’s initiative could become confused about their eligibility status.
“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,” Paxton wrote in Monday’s letter, specifying those individuals in a news release as potential felons or noncitizens. “Either way, it is illegal, and if you move forward with this proposal, I will use all available legal means to stop you.”
According to the agenda, the county is now set to hire Civic Government LLC – a group which purports to “maintain the most comprehensive unregistered voter database available” – to send the mailers. It isn’t immediately clear which areas of the county the effort would focus on, but agenda materials say such an action would constitute an exemption to the Texas County Purchasing Act, which requires county governments to engage in a competitive bidding process for expenditures of more than $50,000.
The Commissioners Court agenda cites an exemption centered around “an item that can be obtained from only one source.” However, Paxton wrote Bexar County leaders that he believed registering voters constituted a service and not an “item.”
Paxton also used the letter to further condemn what he called the “Biden-Harris administration’s open border policies,” saying that Texas has “ballooning noncitizen populations” that he suggested the county’s voter registration mailer efforts would target.
“It is more important than ever that we maintain the integrity of our voter rolls and ensure only eligible voters decide our elections,” he wrote. “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.”
A similar letter was sent to Harris County leaders, whom Paxton said are considering a similar plan as Bexar County’s.
The attorney general’s letter comes on the heels of his Election Integrity Unit executing search warrants in Bexar, Frio, and Atascosa counties last month—the result of an election integrity investigation that started in 2022, according to a news release. The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) said the raids targeted six of its members, including a Democrat running for a state House seat that includes Uvalde.
Paxton’s office has said little about that probe other than it pertains to allegations of election fraud and vote harvesting. Affidavits for warrants obtained by The Texas Tribune show that investigators were looking into allegations that a Frio County political operator had illegally harvested votes for multiple local races.
LULAC called the searches an effort “to suppress the Latino vote through intimidation and any means necessary to tilt the electoral process in favor of his political allies.” And, just before the holiday weekend, a coalition of Texas Democrats called on the DOJ to investigate Paxton’s actions.