Texas Is Terrorizing Voters

State Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office raided Latino Democratic candidates’ and activists’ homes under the false pretense of election security.

Image courtesy of the New York Times

In November of 2020, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, an ally of then President Trump and a staunch election denier, sought to overturn the results of the national election. That effort failed spectacularly, but that didn’t stop him from putting his finger on the scale of Texas elections. 

Paxton’s “Election Integrity Unit” next went after alleged election violations, filing dozens of bogus criminal claims of election fraud, including false claims of ballot harvesting. The state’s highest criminal court threw most of those out.

Now Paxton has shifted his mode of attack, enlisting the help of a Republican DA who “referred” a case to his office. I’m curious to know on what grounds, and whether there was any coordination at work. Paxton has now used that referral as a pretext to conduct raids on the homes and offices of Latino voting activists claiming “voter fraud.” Among the targets are Democratic leaders and election volunteers. They’ve had their cell phones, computers and documents seized, and ordinary citizens are now embroiled in costly criminal cases.

Make no mistake: The charges are political and are intended to intimidate and to suppress votes under the guise of “secure elections.” Latino civil rights groups have asked the Justice Department to intervene.

In today’s piece, I’ll provide additional background and context to Paxton’s efforts to overturn election results, suppress votes, and throw elections in his state. I’ll then discuss his office’s current campaign to target and terrorize the Latino community ahead of the 2024 election.

Ken Paxton: Enemy of Democracy

Paxton’s long history of criminal charges, ethical complaints and impeachable offenses (he narrowly escaped conviction after impeachment by his own party earlier this year) could fill an entire government ethics course. For purposes of this discussion, I’m going to focus on his election-related abuses of power.

For some important context, Paxton is a hard-core election denier. He spoke at the January 6 Ellipse rally and has spread false election conspiracies. As Texas Attorney General, he filed a wildly inappropriate and baseless lawsuit in December of 2020, enlisting a group of red state AGs to challenge the election results in four blue ones, claiming they had failed to follow the law. That meritless suit got tossed by the Supreme Court in short order, and the Texas State Bar sought disciplinary action against Paxton for even filing it.

Paxton is also a superspreader of election lies. His office even screened a showing of 2000 Mules, the widely debunked, depublished and discredited film by convicted felon Dinesh D’Souza about supposed election fraud. 

To keep the myth of election fraud going, he targeted the Latino community with scores of criminal cases using the false claim, ginned up by Trump and Fox, that persons who are here illegally are voting in high numbers. This has no basis in fact and also defies common sense. After all, why would someone who is here illegally commit a crime that could have them deported? And why would they do so while leaving a paper trail for the government, complete with their identification and address where they could be found?

Of the some 100 cases charged by his office, only four wound up even being prosecuted at a cost of $2.3 million. The rest were tossed on grounds it was unconstitutional for Paxton to unilaterally pursue the charges. His efforts are part of a larger push by Republican DAs and AGs to aggressively prosecute alleged voter fraud, with simple harmless error being charged at the maximum felony levels to try and intimidate and make examples of voters.

Paxton’s latest deplorable move

With the courts telling him he couldn’t pursue election fraud charges on his own, Paxton shifted gears. He enlisted the help of Republican District Attorney Audrey Gossett Louis in the 81st Judicial District in Texas. That includes Atascosa and Frio Counties, where some of the recent raids were conducted.

The New York Times published an account of some of the raids. Some raids were conducted on actual candidates running for office:

On Tuesday…officers raided the home of Cecilia Castellano, a Democrat running against Don McLaughlin, the former mayor of Uvalde, for a state House seat, taking her cellphone.

Ms. Castellano described her experience as “very frightening” and said she still did not know why she was targeted. “This is all political,” she said.

Police also broke down a door and raided the home of Manuel Medina, a consultant for Castellano’s campaign. Medina is also chair of the Tejano Democrats, a group advocating for greater Hispanic representation in the Democratic Party.

Elderly residents were also targeted, including Lidia Martinez, an 87-year old retired educator in San Antonio:

Nine officers, seven of them men, some with guns in their holsters, then pushed open the door and marched past a living room wall decorated with crucifixes, she said.

“I got scared,” she recalled in an interview on Sunday, speaking in both English and Spanish. “They told me, ‘We have a warrant to search your house.’ I said, ‘Why?’ I felt harassed.”

Ms. Martinez said that the officers told her they came because she had filled out a report saying that older residents were not getting mail ballots. “Yes, I did,” she told them. For 35 years, Ms. Martinez has been a member of LULAC, the civil rights group, helping Latino residents stay engaged in politics. Much of her work has included instructing older residents and veterans on how to fill out voter registration cards.

“I go to a lot of senior events; I explain to them what they have to do,” she said. “I’ve been involved in politics all of my life.”

Reactions from Latino elected leaders have been swift and, understandably, full of outrage. State Senator Roland Gutierrez could barely contain his anger, claiming “Crooked Ken Paxton” had targeted and terrorized seniors in his district. He called for an immediate investigation in the following clip posted to Twitter:

Leaders of LULAC and elected officials will hold a news conference on Monday to demand answers. LULAC has also asked the Department of Justice to open an investigation into Paxton’s misuse of his office to conduct a sprawling set of raids on Democratic activists and leaders in the Latino community.

Fascism, Texas style

It’s important to recognize this for what it is. A party like the Texas GOP using the power of government to intimidate the opposition and suppress its democratic efforts is what we see in places like Russia, Hungary and Venezuela. It is fundamentally anti-democratic, particularly when it is conducted so close to an actual election. 

Paxton can tie down the other side using state charges, forcing them to spend money and time on legal defense against entirely bogus charges, while handicapping their get out the vote efforts by seizing their electronic devices and computers.

Someone like Paxton who has a long history of abusing his office shouldn’t be given any benefit of the doubt here. And conducting these raids in the name of “election security” is an Orwellian level of government speak that not only furthers a false narrative with no evidentiary basis but also undermines faith in our democratic systems generally.

When people ask me whether Texas will flip blue, either in the Senate or the Presidential race, I often say it might, but it is a voter suppressed state. The deck is stacked against Democrats there in many ways, including now open intimidation tactics and rampant abuse of government authority by Paxton.

While it’s important for the Justice Department to take an immediate and aggressive stand against such abuses, it’s even more important for Latino activists, politicians and voters not to be cowed by Paxton and his goons. In this there is a glimmer of hope. As the New York Times reported,

Days after the raid, Ms. Martinez said she still felt shaken. But she said she remained committed to the cause.

“They wanted to intimidate me,” she said. “But this is important work.”