Ken Paxton’s voter registration suit against returned to state court

"Ken Paxton’s voter registration suit against Travis County returned to state court" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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A federal court on Thursday returned a lawsuit to state court that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had filed against Travis County over an effort to register voters before the November election.

The federal court found that it did not have jurisdiction over the issue, as Travis County officials had argued, and it granted Paxton's request that the lawsuit be returned to state court.

The decision is the latest development in a bitter pre-election brawl between Republican state officials and Democratic county leaders. Republican leaders have maintained that they are trying to keep the state's voter rolls secure ahead of a charged election, while Democrats, county officials and nonprofit groups have accused them of stoking baseless fears to suppress Democratic votes and to cast doubt on the election results.

Here's what you need to know.

The background: In a bid to boost voter registrations, Travis County commissioners hired Civic Government Solutions in August to identify eligible voters living in the county who were not registered to vote. Travis County, a Democratic stronghold, includes Austin.

Paxton sued Travis County officials on Sept. 5, arguing that the effort violated state law and claiming that it would register non-citizens who are ineligible to vote. He sought an emergency order to block the effort. The Travis County Court denied his request on Sept. 16.

The next day, Travis County officials moved the suit to federal court, arguing that the voter outreach program was protected by the federal National Voter Registration Act, and that Paxton's attempt to stop it was a violation of that law. County officials also sued Paxton for the same reason in a separate lawsuit in federal court.

Thursday's decision said that the National Voter Registration Act was meant to be applied in tandem with state law, and that Travis County officials failed to show that the issue fell under the federal court's jurisdiction.

Why Texas sued: In suing Travis County officials in September, Paxton called the decision by county commissioners to hire an outside firm and move forward with the voter outreach program illegal.

“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,” Paxton said at the time. “Programs like this invite fraud and reduce public trust in our elections. We will stop them and any other county considering such programs.”

Paxton, without evidence, has routinely accused Democrats of adopting more permissive immigration policies to boost the ranks of noncitizens to vote and help them win elections. Only U.S. citizens are permitted to vote under both federal and state law. Data shows that instances of noncitizen voting are exceedingly rare.

What Travis County said: Travis County officials defended their work to register eligible voters and accused Paxton of violating a federal law that protects voter outreach programs.

“Travis County is committed to encouraging voter participation and we are proud of our outreach efforts that achieve higher voter registration numbers," county spokesperson Hector Nieto said in September. "We remain steadfast in our responsibility to uphold the integrity of the voter registration process while ensuring that every eligible person has the opportunity to exercise their right to vote. It is disappointing that any statewide elected official would prefer to sow distrust and discourage participation in the electoral process.”

At The Texas Tribune Festival in September, Travis County Judge Andy Brown said that county officials should do all they could to register voters, particularly in a state where residents cannot register online. “Paxton does this every time,” Brown said.

Jeremy Smith, Civic Government Solutions' chief executive, said that outreach efforts would be strictly nonpartisan and would pose little risk of registering noncitizens. He said that the company uses a mix of public records and county data to identify people who could have recently moved and are unregistered, and he noted various checks in place to prevent noncitizens from registering to vote.

When voter registrars receive applications, they send them to the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, where they are checked for eligibility against Department of Public Safety and Social Security Administration data. In addition, local voter registrars work with their county district attorney’s office to check citizenship status using responses from jury summons questionnaires.

In a separate, federal lawsuit filed on Sept. 17, Travis County officials accused Paxton and Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson of violating the federal Voting Rights Act by trying to prevent them from carrying out their duty to promote people’s right to vote. They accused Nelson of doing nothing to stop Paxton’s alleged conduct, and they argued that federal law not only allows them to send out the voter registration applications, but encourages them to do so.

The broader context: The lawsuits are among several legal disputes between Paxton and Democratic county leaders amid a broader fight Republicans have waged over voting and election integrity.

Paxton also sued Bexar County — which includes San Antonio — on Sept. 4 for its effort to send unsolicited voter registration forms to eligible county residents. A state district court judge denied Paxton's petition to block the program on Sept. 16, saying the request was moot because the forms had already been mailed.

Gov. Greg Abbott announced in late August that Texas officials had removed roughly 1 million people from its voter rolls since 2021 — though election experts noted that such maintenance is a routine part of complying with state and federal law, and warned that Abbott’s framing of the action could be used to undermine trust in elections.

Abbott’s office said the names scrapped from the voter rolls included more than 6,500 noncitizens who shouldn’t have been registered, and about 1,930 of those had a voting history. Voter watchdog and voting rights groups have questioned the figure, noting that Texas has incorrectly flagged people as noncitizens in the past.

Paxton’s office also recently conducted a series of raids as part of an investigation into alleged vote harvesting in Frio, Atascosa and Bexar counties, a move the League of United Latin American Citizens cast as an effort to “suppress the Latino vote through intimidation.” In addition, Paxton has probed what appear to be unsubstantiated claims that migrants were registering to vote outside a state drivers license facility west of Fort Worth.

Democratic state and federal lawmakers asked the Justice Department in September to investigate the recent spate of election-related actions, saying they were “sowing fear and will suppress voting” among communities of color.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/10/10/texas-ken-paxton-travis-county-registration-lawsuit/.

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