Texas AG sues large county, alleging it is spending tax dollars on partisan voter registration

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued another county for allegedly violating state election law, this time, the Travis County Commissioners Court.

The lawsuit was filed in the District Court of Travis County and names the Travis County Tax Assessor-Collector and Voter Registrar, county judge and commissioners as defendants.

On August 27, the commissioners court held a public meeting and approved the hiring of Civic Government Solutions to implement “unregistered voter outreach services.”

The contract tasks CGS with identifying “any current Travis County resident that is at least 18 years of age, a US citizen and not already registered to vote.” It also requires CGS to provide the county with a list of “the resultant, Eligible Resident-Citizens and their current residence address and mailing address.”

CGS was the sole bidder for the contract and is charging the county $3,562.80 per 10,000 names of eligible resident citizens Ias part of its “unregistered voter outreach services,” according to county records.

CGS claims on its website to have the “most comprehensive database of unregistered voters.” It also claims to have a “broad range of expertise, including data scientists, voting law experts, and mail logistics experience” that enables it to “deliver the market’s most reliable and effective voter registration solutions.”

The company is run by Jeremy Smith, who also runs Civitech, according to Texas Comptroller data. Civitech has been described as “a progressive data startup” that worked with 40 organizations to recruit and train more than 2,700 “new progressive candidates to run for office” and registered more than 50,000 new voters in 2021, Axios reported.

According to the ethics disclosure form filed with the county, CGS has made no political contributions and engaged in no lobbying activities although Smith has been characterized as a Democratic operative.

Using taxpayer money to hire an alleged partisan vendor to conduct voter registration and compilation services violates state election law and exceeds the county’s statutory authority, Paxton argues.

Travis County is not authorized by Texas law to do this, the lawsuit argues. It asks the court to issue an emergency injunction to stop county officials from “giving a partisan organization thousands of taxpayer dollars to identify the names and addresses of potentially unregistered voters without statutory authority.” It argues county officials’ actions “will create confusion, facilitate fraud, undermine confidence in elections, and are illegal ultra vires acts because they exceed statutory authority.”

“Travis County has blatantly violated Texas law by paying partisan actors to conduct unlawful identification efforts to track down people who are not registered to vote,” Paxton said. “Programs like this invite fraud and reduce public trust in our elections. We will stop them and any other county considering such programs.”

Paxton sued Travis County officials after suing Bexar County officials for approving a plan to spend nearly $400,000 to hire a company with alleged ties to the Democratic Party to print and distribute voter registration forms to unregistered county residents. Prior to suing, Paxton issued a warning to cancel the plan and said if they didn’t, he would sue.

The lawsuit was also filed after Paxton, the Secretary of State and Gov. Greg Abbott all issued advisories to voters and county officials about not violating election law, including registering noncitizens to vote or noncitizens voting.

Texas also recently removed more than 1.1 million people from the voter rolls, including 6,500 noncitizens, 6,000 with felony convictions, and more than 457,000 deceased.