Courtesy Photograph / Texas Legal professional Normal’s Workplace
Voting-rights teams argue Texas Legal professional Normal Ken Paxton’s authorized wrangling to make sure “election integrity” is designed to maintain folks away from the polls.
The authorized battle over voting rights between Texas’ Democrat-controlled cities and its Republican lawyer common has escalated.
Austin’s Travis County — a longtime blue stronghold — has filed a federal lawsuit towards Texas AG Ken Paxton and Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson over the state’s efforts to dam municipal voter-registration efforts earlier than the November election.
The authorized submitting comes as Paxton, a vocal ally of former President Donald Trump, has pursued lawsuits in state courts to dam counties from sending voter-registration playing cards to folks flagged as eligible however unregistered voters.
Paxton has accused each Travis and Bexar counties of violating state regulation by mailing registration playing cards. Early this week, a state district courtroom choose dominated that Paxton’s Bexar County declare was moot since officers already carried out the mailing. He is since mentioned he plans to attraction the ruling.
In its go well with towards Paxton, Travis County argues the AG is violating the federal Voting Rights Act by attempting to dam native officers from finishing up their duties to advertise folks’s participation in elections. The go well with alleges that Nelson has completed nothing to cease Paxton from breaking federal regulation.
Paxton has repeatedly parroted Trump’s discredited assertions that the 2020 election was marred by widespread fraud and that Democrats have intentionally allowed asylum seekers into the nation to allow them to be added to the voter rolls.
The AG additionally drew current outrage from Latino teams and Democratic lawmakers by finishing up raids on South Texas Democratic organizers as a part of a two-year-old “election integrity” investigation. He additionally opened an investigation into alleged voter fraud in North Texas after a Fox Information host tweeted an unsubstantiated declare that teams there have been registering noncitizens to vote.
In a separate federal lawsuit filed final week, Jolt — a nonprofit centered on rising Latinos’ civic participation — accused Paxton of looking for to break the group and its associates by utilizing his voter-fraud investigations to reveal its employees to public threats.
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