HARRIS COUNTY, Texas — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sent a letter warning Harris County commissioners and Judge Lina Hidalgo to not send voter registration applications to who he called "unverified recipients."
In a news release, Paxton said the distribution of these forms would violate the law.
Paxton said both Harris and Bexar counties are considering using taxpayer funds to pay third-party vendors to print and distribute voter registration forms to go out to unregistered residents.
Tuesday, Bexar County defied Paxton and passed their proposal.
Paxton said doing so would lead ineligible people, such as felons and noncitizens, to commit a crime by attempting to register to vote.
The attorney general said Texas counties have "no statutory authority" to print and mail state voter registration forms.
“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 in the release. “These counties’ attempts to do so after the Biden-Harris Administration has allowed millions of illegal aliens to enter the country are especially troubling.”
In the letter, Paxton urged county commissioners to abandon this proposal and if not, he would see them in court. Paxton sent a similar letter to Bexar County officials.
According to the Texas Secretary of State's website, you must be at least 18 years old on Election Day, a U.S. citizen, a resident of the county where the application was submitted, not a convicted felon and not declared mentally incapacitated to be eligible to vote.
We've reached out to Judge Hidalgo's office for a response to Paxton's letter. We'll add the response here if and when we get it.
Harris County Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis sent us this statement Tuesday:
"The Harris County Commissioners Court has taken no recent action with regard to expanding voter registration efforts, so it is abundantly clear that the Attorney General’s motivation is pure voter intimidation. No effort by my office involves targeting specific demographics for the purpose of expanding voter registration even though there are no statutory prohibitions on encouraging eligible citizens to legally register to vote.
I will not give extremists in Austin the benefit of dismissing their false claims as imaginary violations or even political delusions prompted by their presidential candidate. I’ll call it as it is: an attempt to take our state back to the terror days of 1950s intimidation, Jim Crow and voter suppression. The Attorney General and his ilk are cut from the same cloth as those who sought to interfere in the work done by civil rights leaders and the Freedom Riders to give people of color the power of the franchise, as guaranteed under the Constitution. And I stand with those early advocates in calling on our national leaders to put a halt to these cowardly and undemocratic actions."
Harris County Precinct 2 Commissioner Adrian Garcia released this statement:
"Harris County has done nothing wrong. The idea that anything we do would encourage non-citizens to vote is nonsense. Rather than send threatening letters, Mr. Paxton should focus on what matters most to most like real threats to our state such as our unreliable grid, protecting pregnant women from draconian abortion bans, and stopping kids from being killed in classrooms. Instead, he makes it clear that he is playing politics by continuing efforts to damage our democracy.”
We've also linked Paxton's full letter below.