AUSTIN — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s attempt to block a voter registration drive in one of his state’s most populous urban counties — and biggest Democratic strongholds — has failed in state district court.
On Monday, State District Judge Antonia Arteaga dismissed the Republican attorney general’s lawsuit against Bexar County, the home of San Antonio.
Paxton’s suit was part of a broader GOP campaign against Democratic voter registration efforts as the Senate and presidential races have tightened in Texas — a campaign marked by false claims and conspiracy theories of a grand Democratic plot to steal the election with a wave of ballots cast by voters who are in the country illegally.
Texas Democrats earlier this month called on the Department of Justice to investigate Paxton over the action that kicked off this campaign: searches of Latino and Democrat activists and a candidate in counties surrounding Bexar.
In the latest fight, Bexar County had proposed to send out registration forms to unregistered voters — something Paxton argued was outside of the scope of the county’s legal powers.
Judge Arteaga ruled Paxton’s suit was moot, because the county had already sent out the voter registration forms, The Texas Tribune reported.
That upheld the argument of Bexar County, whose assistant district attorney argued that those unregistered voters targeted by the county had already “received those forms, and perhaps have already returned them.”
Paxton cried foul Monday night, arguing Bexar had expedited the registration forms to get ahead of his lawsuit.
“In a display of bad faith, Bexar County engaged in dirty tricks to avoid appropriate judicial review of a clearly unlawful program that invites voter fraud,” the attorney general said in a statement.
“These actions demonstrate that Bexar County knew what they were doing was wrong, yet expedited the mailout of unsolicited registration forms before the issue could be argued in court.”
Paxton has appealed the decision.
With the Senate race in Texas appearing tight — Democratic Rep. Colin Allred has repeatedly polled within the margin of error against incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz (R) — the election could come down to registration.
In 2020, less than 80 percent of Texas’s voting age population registered to vote, and just more than half of eligible voters cast a ballot, according to state data.
A deadline looms over both sides: Less than three weeks remain to register Texas voters for the election to come.
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