Ken Paxton, Texas’ scandal-plagued attorney general, launched a couple of election-related investigations last week, both of which are controversial for different reasons.
Last week, for example, Paxton’s office executed search warrants in the San Antonio area, alleging irregularities. Soon after, as a New York Times report explained, a Latino civil rights group asked the U.S. Justice Department to open an investigation into Paxton’s efforts, which targeted Latino voting activists and political operatives:
The League of United Latin American Citizens, one of the nation’s oldest Latino civil rights organizations, said that many of those targeted were Democratic leaders and election volunteers, and that some were older residents. Gabriel Rosales, the director of the group’s Texas chapter, said that officers conducting the raids took cellphones, computers and documents. He called the raids “alarming” and said they were an effort to suppress Latino voters.
The DOJ hasn’t yet said whether it’ll pursue the matter, and the Texas attorney general has claimed his recent raids had merit, but the simmering controversy is likely to continue.
Paxton’s other election investigation in the Lone Star State is considerably weirder. The Texas Tribune reported:
Officials in a North Texas county debunked claims made by a Fox News host that migrants were registering to vote outside a state drivers license facility west of Fort Worth — an unsubstantiated claim that appeared to spark an investigation by Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office.
Evidently, Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo — whose conspiratorial perspective is difficult to defend — published an item to her social media account on Aug. 18, claiming that a friend of hers has a friend whose wife allegedly saw people registering immigrants to vote outside DMV offices. Despite the obviously flimsy nature of the claim, the host peddled the story on the air soon after, telling viewers that the immigrants in question were “illegals.”
The Texas Department of Public Safety wasted little time in debunking Bartiromo’s claims, explaining that the claims were “simply false” and “kind of racist.” The chairman of the Parker County GOP agreed that the reports were “erroneous.”
Nevertheless, three days after Bartiromo published her third-hand rumor online, Paxton’s office announced it was opening an investigation into “reports that organizations operating in Texas may be unlawfully registering noncitizens to vote.”
Last week, a statewide poll from the University of Houston Hobby School and Texas Southern University’s Jordan-Leland School found Donald Trump leading Vice President Kamala Harris in Texas, but only by about 5 points. The same poll found Republican Sen. Ted Cruz with a two-point lead over Democratic Rep. Colin Allred in the state’s U.S. Senate race.
It was against this backdrop that Gabriel Rosales, Texas state director for the League of United Latin American Citizens, told the Texas Tribune that he viewed Paxton’s investigation as an act of intimidation to keep Hispanic voters from voting.
Republicans “ see the writing on the wall,” he said. “They know that if the Hispanic vote comes out, they lose.”
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