He’s consistent, we’ll acknowledge that.
Still a crook any way you look
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 seeking a temporary injunction to stop Civic Government Solutions’ 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 against Travis County Judge Andy Brown, all four county commissioners and Tax Assessor-Collector and Voter Registrar Bruce Elfant in state District Court.
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 Travis County Commissioners Court approved the contract with Civic Government Solutions on Aug. 27. The county’s meeting agenda shows the estimated cost is $3,562.80 per 10,000 “names of Eligible Resident-Citizens.”
[…]
The lawsuit comes two days after Paxton sued Bexar County officials over their hiring of the same company for voter registration services. A Bexar County attorney said Tuesday that he disagrees with Paxton’s legal basis for that lawsuit, which also argues CGS is partisan and alleges commissioners did not have the authority to send voter registration applications to residents who have not requested them. No state law prohibits such registration efforts.
Paxton has also threatened to sue Harris County if it hires the same firm for voter registration work.
The company’s chief executive officer, Jeremy Smith, is also listed as CEO of a company that was characterized as a “progressive data startup” by Axios. But while Paxton characterizes CGS as “partisan” and alleges it is a “subsidiary of a known partisan organization” in the lawsuit, it’s unclear if that is the case.
Smith, during a Bexar County Commissioners meeting Tuesday, noted that the company had reached out to the state’s 254 counties to offer voter registration services.
CGS has previously worked with a Republican-appointed secretary of state, Bexar County Commissioner Justin Rodriguez told the Statesman on Wednesday. He also said its 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.
[…]
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 the right thing to do,” Howard said.
See here and here for more on the Bexar County lawsuit. I was unaware that Travis County had engaged with this firm until I saw this headline, but it makes sense that they’d pitch themselves around the state. It would be interesting to know if any of the Republican counties they contacted gave them serious consideration. As for the lawsuits, either these counties have pretty badly misread state law and will get slapped down, or this is typical Paxton bluster and red meat that only has a chance of getting traction when argued in front of a friendly court, which in this case means SCOTx. My best guess is it’s the latter and the initial efforts will lose, and then we’ll have to see if there’s enough pretext for SCOTx to bail him out. I’ll know more when we see how these arguments go. KXAN and the Trib have more.
Looking for attorney general appointment if the orange man wins.