Tag Archives: Texas Civil Rights Project

Paxton whines about the disciplinary process he selected

Posted on May 7, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

My head hurts. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the state’s top lawyer, said Friday the state bar was suing him for professional misconduct related to his lawsuit challenging the 2020 presidential election. “I have recently learned that the Texas State … Continue reading →

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Second lawsuit filed over Galveston redistricting

Posted on April 17, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

Similar grounds, different plaintiffs. A coalition of civil rights groups in Texas filed a federal lawsuit Thursday against Galveston County, alleging that the county’s redistricting plan intentionally discriminates against a growing minority population in the Gulf Coast community. The complaint, … Continue reading →

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We have a final count of rejected mail ballots

Posted on April 7, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

About one in eight got canned. That’s a lot. The votes of more than 24,000 Texans who tried to cast ballots by mail were thrown out in the March primary — a dramatic increase in rejected ballots in the first … Continue reading →

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Guess who’s paying for Ken Paxton’s defense against those state bar complaints?

Posted on March 31, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

You are, of course. What did you expect? Texas taxpayers are on the hook for $45,000 so far in legal defense for Attorney General Ken Paxton as he attempts to ward off multiple complaints to the State Bar over his … Continue reading →

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First “Trump Train” lawsuit to proceed

Posted on March 26, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

Good news. Today, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas ruled in favor of plaintiffs in Cervini v. Cisneros, the “Texas Trump Train” lawsuit filed against individuals in a convoy of Trump supporters who conspired to mount … Continue reading →

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Still more on the mail ballot rejections

Posted on March 19, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

The Associated Press moves the ball forward now that the votes have been canvassed. Texas threw out mail votes at an abnormally high rate during the nation’s first primary of 2022, rejecting nearly 23,000 ballots outright under tougher voting rules … Continue reading →

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More data about mail ballot rejections

Posted on March 13, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

Keep it coming. Thousands of Texans who attempted to vote by mail in the March primary were disenfranchised in the state’s first election conducted under a new Republican voting law. The state’s largest counties saw a significant spike in the … Continue reading →

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The rejected mail ballots of Bexar County

Posted on March 12, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

I have four things to say about this. Bexar County rejected mail-in ballots at roughly ten times the rate it did before the passage of the state’s new voting law last year. Before Senate Bill 1 took effect, with its … Continue reading →

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State Bar complaint against Paxton to proceed

Posted on March 10, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

Nice, but I’m still not expecting there to be consequences for him. I will be delighted to be wrong about that. A Texas State Bar complaint against Attorney General Ken Paxton is moving forward and will be heard by either … Continue reading →

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Voting Rights Groups Sue Texas for Failure to Disclose Records Related to Voter Purges

Posted on February 3, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

From the inbox: The Campaign Legal Center (CLC), the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Texas, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and DĒMOS filed a lawsuit asking the U.S. … Continue reading →

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Don’t expect the absentee ballot fiasco to improve

Posted on January 25, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

Things are working as planned. Signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott in September, the voting law known as Senate Bill 1 contained an array of new restrictions on the state’s voting process and narrowed local control of elections. Among … Continue reading →

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It would seem that the San Marcos Police Department has some major problems

Posted on January 9, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

Geez. The city of San Marcos admits in new court documents to text exchanges among its police officers about the Joe Biden bus incident in October 2020. But it denies what it calls a “characterization” of the exchanges by the … Continue reading →

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How’s that online voter registration thing going?

Posted on December 28, 2021 by Charles Kuffner

Pretty well, it seems. So well, perhaps, that the state of Texas doesn’t want to tell you how well. Since a federal judge forced Texas nearly a year and a half ago to offer limited online voter registration, 1.5 million … Continue reading →

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The botched “non-citizen” voter purge continues

Posted on December 21, 2021 by Charles Kuffner

At some point we need to recognize the fact that our Secretary of State’s office is completely, and maybe maliciously, inept at doing this. Texas’ last attempt to scour its voting rolls for noncitizens two years ago quickly devolved into … Continue reading →

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Trump Train lawsuit update

Posted on November 2, 2021 by Charles Kuffner

San Marcos Police Department, wyd? As supporters of then-President Donald Trump surrounded and harassed a Joe Biden campaign bus on a Central Texas highway last year, San Marcos police officials and 911 dispatchers fielded multiple requests for assistance from Democratic … Continue reading →

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Abbott and Patrick whine about State Bar complaint against Paxton

Posted on September 27, 2021 by Charles Kuffner

Poor, poor babies. The state’s top officials came to the defense of embattled Attorney General Ken Paxton, saying a state bar investigation into his professional conduct is “politically motivated” and raises questions about the state’s separation of powers. On Friday, … Continue reading →

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A kinder, gentler voter purge

Posted on September 19, 2021 by Charles Kuffner

How nice. Two years after Texas officials fumbled an effort to double-check the voting rolls on a hunt for non-citizens — and instead threatened the voting rights of nearly 60,000 eligible Texans — similar efforts to purge non-citizen voters are … Continue reading →

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First two lawsuits filed against the voter suppression bill

Posted on September 4, 2021 by Charles Kuffner

No time wasted. The top elections official in Harris County and a host of organizations that serve Texans of color and Texans with disabilities have fired the opening salvos in what’s expected to be an extensive legal battle over Texas’ … Continue reading →

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Final settlement in Motor Voter 2.0 lawsuit

Posted on August 4, 2021 by Charles Kuffner

From Democracy Docket: Last Friday, individual Texan voters, the Texas Democratic Party, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) settled a five-year long lawsuit with Texas over its noncompliance with the National Voter Registration … Continue reading →

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Another State Bar complaint against Paxton

Posted on July 23, 2021 by Charles Kuffner

He certainly deserves all the trouble this has brought him. Whether any of it leads to actual consequences, we’ll have to see. Four former presidents of the State Bar of Texas joined a group of high-profile lawyers on Wednesday to … Continue reading →

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Suing the “Trump Train”

Posted on June 25, 2021 by Charles Kuffner

Good. A group of people traveling on a President Joe Biden campaign bus on a Texas highway last fall when it was surrounded and followed by former President Donald Trump’s supporters have filed a lawsuit against at least seven people … Continue reading →

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House committee passes its voter suppression bill

Posted on April 9, 2021 by Charles Kuffner

I remain pessimistic about this, but we have no choice but to fight. A Texas House committee on Thursday advanced an elections bill that would make it a state jail felony for local election officials to distribute an application to … Continue reading →

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More local pushback against SB7 and HB6

Posted on April 7, 2021 by Charles Kuffner

From the inbox: Mayor Sylvester Turner invited a diverse group of elected officials, community leaders, and business executives to stand in solidarity against voter suppression bills in the Texas Legislature. More than 50 individuals and organizations have vowed to fight … Continue reading →

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Census apportionment shenanigans to be officially curtailed

Posted on January 21, 2021 by Charles Kuffner

As it should be. The Trump administration’s protracted efforts to keep some immigrants from being counted when congressional seats are divvied up after the 2020 census ended with the former president’s departure from the White House, but President Joe Biden’s … Continue reading →

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I remain pessimistic about the chances of good voting bills passing

Posted on November 28, 2020 by Charles Kuffner

This Trib story suggests that with Republicans doing well in the high turnout 2020 election, and with the emergency measures that were implemented to expand voting access, the odds of getting a bill passed to make some forms of voting … Continue reading →

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Hey, look, it’s online voter registration!

Posted on September 27, 2020 by Charles Kuffner

And they said it couldn’t be done. When Jarrod Stringer updated his driver’s license address in 2014, the Texas Department of Public Safety website asked if he wanted to register to vote. He clicked yes and thought he was registered. … Continue reading →

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Where are we with the lawsuit to stop Harris County from sending out vote by mail applications?

Posted on September 10, 2020 by Charles Kuffner

Thanks for asking, we had the hearing in district court yesterday. Voting in person will be safe across Texas in this fall’s general election despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the state’s elections director asserted in a Harris County courtroom Wednesday … Continue reading →

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Will we have redistricting hearings?

Posted on September 5, 2020 by Charles Kuffner

Not looking great for it right now. In the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic, Texas Republicans have quietly halted plans to hold a series of public input hearings across more than 20 cities, slated to occur earlier this year, to … Continue reading →

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Plaintiffs prevail again in Motor Voter Lawsuit 2.0

Posted on August 30, 2020 by Charles Kuffner

Same result as before, this time without the technicality that got the first try thrown out on appeal. A persistent Texas voter, twice thwarted when he tried registering to vote while renewing his driver’s license online, has for the second … Continue reading →

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Hollins asks for some slack on when mail ballots are received

Posted on August 21, 2020 by Charles Kuffner

From the inbox: On Wednesday, August 19, 2020, Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins sent a formal request to Governor Greg Abbott requesting that Governor Abbott extend the deadline by which county election administrators can receive mail ballots. The deadline for … Continue reading →

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The current status on local police reform efforts

Posted on June 12, 2020 by Charles Kuffner

Well, the budget amendment process didn’t do much. City Council on Wednesday unanimously approved Mayor Sylvester Turner’s $5.1 billion budget for the next fiscal year, slightly increasing funds for the Houston Police Department even as some cities are under pressure … Continue reading →

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Paxton threatens county clerks over vote by mail instructions

Posted on May 3, 2020 by Charles Kuffner

Seems to me this should get a bit more attention. Attorney General Ken Paxton informed county judges and election officials Friday that if they advise voters who normally aren’t eligible to apply for mail-in ballots due to a fear of … Continue reading →

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TDP gets initial win in vote by mail lawsuit

Posted on April 16, 2020 by Charles Kuffner

It’s a good start, but we’ve got a long way to go. A state district judge on Wednesday said he will move forward with an order easing restrictions for voting by mail in Texas in light of the new coronavirus … Continue reading →

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Another view of the lawsuit over expanded voting by mail

Posted on April 13, 2020 by Charles Kuffner

From Ian Millhiser at Vox, who is decidedly more pessimistic about the plaintiffs’ chances. He starts by noting how restrictive Texas’ existing vote-by-mail law is. The law only allows Texas voters to obtain an absentee ballot under a very limited … Continue reading →

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