Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sues Bexar County over voter registration outreach effort

Bexar County officials moved forward Tuesday with a plan to mail county residents voter registration forms, defying Attorney General Ken Paxton ’s threat to use “all available legal means” to quash the effort.

Paxton followed through Wednesday morning, filing a lawsuit in a state district court in Bexar County that seeks an emergency order to block the program. The lawsuit contends that counties lack the authority to send out unsolicited registration applications, while also arguing that Bexar County officials erred by awarding the contract without going through a competitive bidding process.

The legal clash escalates a brewing fight between Texas Republicans and some of the state’s largest counties over initiatives to proactively send registration applications to people who are eligible but unregistered to vote. Harris County leaders are weighing a similar plan, and Paxton warned the two counties against such efforts Monday evening, claiming they would run afoul of state law and risk adding noncitizens to the voter rolls.

Rebuffing those claims, Bexar County Commissioners Court voted 3-1 to approve a $393,000 outreach contract with Civic Government Solutions following three hours of fervent discussion at Tuesday’s court meeting. Local GOP activists spent more than an hour blasting the deal as an illegal waste of taxpayer money and insisting it would be used to disproportionately register Democrats, citing past comments from the firm’s leaders indicating support for Democratic candidates.

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