Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton targets Travis County in voter registration lawsuit

Escalating a series of attacks on voter registration efforts around the state, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Friday sued Travis County officials for hiring a company to identify names and addresses of eligible, unregistered voters.

Paxton is asking a judge to halt Civic Government Solutions' registration work. He accuses the company of being "partisan" and argues that Travis County does not have the authority to collect the names and addresses of potentially unregistered voters.

The complaint was filed in a Travis County state District Court against County Judge Andy Brown, all four county commissioners and Tax Assessor-Collector and Voter Registrar Bruce Elfant.

In a statement Friday, the county rejected Paxton's claims, saying it's committed to "upholding the integrity of the voter registration process while ensuring that every eligible person has the opportunity to exercise their right to vote."

"We are proud of our outreach efforts that achieve higher voter registration numbers," county spokesperson Hector Nieto said in a statement to the American-Statesman. "It is disappointing that any statewide elected official would prefer to sow distrust and discourage participation in the electoral process.”

The move that drew Paxton's suit is the county's Aug. 27 approval of a contract with Civic Government Solutions at an estimated cost is $3,562.80 per 10,000 "names of Eligible Resident-Citizens," according to the court's agenda.

Agenda documents show that Civic Government Solutions was the only respondent to the tax office's bidding request for "Unregistered Voter Outreach Services," which was issued July 19 and opened Aug. 12.

"There are clearly a large number of citizens, including newer citizens in our community, who have not registered to vote for various reasons," the request for proposal states. "By implementing a targeted strategy, we have the potential to significantly increase voter registration in Travis County, thereby strengthening our democratic process."

The lawsuit comes two days after Paxton sued Bexar County officials for hiring the same company to identify eligible residents and mail out registration applications.

Paxton has also threatened to sue Harris County if it hires the same firm for voter registration work.

Bexar County attorney Larry Roberson said Tuesday that he disagrees with Paxton's legal basis for that lawsuit, which also argues that Civic Government Solutions is partisan and alleges that commissioners do not have the authority to send voter registration applications to residents who have not requested them. No state law prohibits such registration efforts.

'We just thought it was a nice thing to do'

Paxton's lawsuit against Travis County claims its use of Civic Government Solutions will "undermine confidence in elections."

"The State seeks emergency injunctive relief against the Defendants to prevent them from giving a partisan organization thousands of taxpayer dollars to identify the names and addresses of potentially unregistered voters without statutory authority," Paxton's complaint reads. "Defendants’ actions will create confusion, facilitate fraud, undermine confidence in elections."

In characterizing the company as partisan, the complaint notes its chief executive officer, Jeremy Smith, is listed as CEO of a company that was characterized as a "progressive data startup" by Axios. The company maintained it is nonpartisan in a statement Friday.

"As a nonpartisan organization, our focus is solely on identifying and assisting unregistered individuals," Tracy Davis, a spokesperson for the company, told the Statesman. "We do not use demographic, political, or any other criteria; we simply segment records based on county and registration status."

Smith, during a Bexar County Commissioners Court meeting Tuesday, noted that the company had reached out to the state's 254 counties to offer voter registration services.

Civic Government Solutions has previously worked with a Republican-appointed secretary of state, Bexar County Commissioner Justin Rodriguez told the Statesman. He also said the company's outreach targets potential voters regardless of political affiliation.

"I don't think a Republican-appointed secretary of state would be working with somebody that is politically motivated," Rodriguez said in a phone interview Wednesday with the Statesman.

Paxton's news release Friday announcing the lawsuit said Civic Government Solutions is the "subsidiary of a partisan company," but that allegation is not backed up, or even repeated, in the lawsuit against Travis County. The attorney general's office did not immediately respond to the Statesman's question asking what company Paxton is referring to.

Texas has among the lowest voter participation rates in the country and is one of eight states that do not allow online voter registration. Roughly 65% of eligible Texans were registered to vote for the 2022 midterm elections, and less than half of the voting-eligible population cast a ballot that cycle, according to KFF Health News.

Travis Commissioner Ann Howard, commenting on the recent lawsuit at a Texas Tribune Festival panel Friday, said that Civic Government Solutions' voter registration outreach "doesn't just go to registered Republicans or Democrats; it goes to everybody who changes their address."

"We just thought it was a nice thing to do," Howard said.

Last week, Paxton's office organized raids across South Texas over still-unfounded allegations that Latino activists have helped noncitizens register to cast ballots in November. The law enforcement actions — including a raid at the home of an 87-year-old retired teacher, Lidia Martinez, on Aug. 20 — have prompted the nation's largest Latino civil rights advocacy group and Texas Democrats to call for federal investigations.

On Thursday, Democratic elected officials representing the Austin area gathered with civil and voting rights advocates at the Capitol to denounce Paxton's voter fraud push and to encourage voters in Travis County and throughout Texas to participate in the November election.

Despite Paxton's office recently conducting a series of search warrants to ferret out supposed illegal voter registration efforts in South Texas and in major metropolitan areas, leaders with The League of United Latin American Citizens, NAACP, and Southwest Voter Registration Education Project reminded voters to verify their information and register to vote by the Oct. 7 deadline.

Gloria Leal, general counsel for LULAC, which initiated a request for a federal investigation after Paxton's initial raids in August, said the organization was unaware of any searches having been conducted in Travis County while rebutting all accusations of illegal voter registration efforts.

Paxton's efforts continue a yearslong campaign against alleged ballot harvesting and alleged illegitimate voter registrations, including unsuccessful lawsuits over alleged voter fraud in four key swing states after President Joe Biden's 2020 victory against former President Donald Trump, a Paxton ally.

In 2022, the State Bar of Texas sued to discipline Paxton for seeking to have Biden's victories overturned in the four key swing states, saying he "knew or should have known" that his claims of widespread election fraud were false.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Ken Paxton sues Travis County to block voter registration efforts