Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas went to court on Wednesday to try to stop county leaders in San Antonio from sending out more than 200,000 voter registration applications to unregistered residents of Bexar County.
The lawsuit by Mr. Paxton followed a letter he sent days earlier warning Bexar County officials, most of whom are Democrats, against proceeding with the mailing. The county’s governing commissioners voted 3 to 1 on Tuesday to approve the proposal anyway.
Mr. Paxton has also threated to sue Harris County, which includes the Democratic stronghold of Houston, where officials have been weighing a similar effort to expand the number of registered voters ahead of the registration deadline early next month for the November election.
The suit is the latest chapter in a yearslong conflict over voting and elections in Texas between Republicans, who dominate state government, and Democrats, who control most of the state’s largest urban areas.
Across the country, there have been other fights over registration, including in Michigan, where the Donald J. Trump campaign is trying to stop a state effort to expand registration at federal offices. Nine Republican state attorneys general sued the Biden administration last month over a three-year-old executive order directing the federal government to expand registration, a suit that also included other Republican opponents of the order.
In Texas, state officials have become increasingly aggressive in recent weeks in their attempts to prevent what Mr. Paxton has said are efforts to circumvent the state’s strict election rules in ways that could lead to fraud in the November election.
The stakes could be high this year: The confrontation comes amid a hard-fought Senate race between Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican seeking his third term, and Representative Colin Allred, a Democrat of Dallas and former N.F.L. player who has trailed by only a few points in some polls.
Last month, officials from Mr. Paxton’s office raided the homes of several Democratic leaders and election volunteers south of San Antonio, including party workers in their 70s and 80s, many of whom were affiliated with a Latino civil rights group, the League of United Latin American Citizens. Mr. Paxton’s investigation appeared to focus on possible election fraud and vote harvesting.
Separately, Mr. Paxton said last month that he was looking into whether there were groups in the state that had been registering noncitizens to vote, though his office has not provided any evidence or named the groups. And he established an email “tip line” for the public to report “suspected violations of Texas election law.”
At the same time, Gov. Greg Abbott released data last month suggesting that nearly 2,000 noncitizens had registered and voted in the state since 2021, which would be illegal if it occurred. (State data showed only 650 noncitizens had been found to have registered in that time; officials said the numbers cited by Mr. Abbott included those suspected of being noncitizens but who never responded to a letter seeking more information.)
Mr. Paxton cited Mr. Abbott’s figures in his lawsuit against Bexar County officials on Wednesday.
The lawsuit asks a state court to step in and stop the county from going forward with its registration application mailings. Mr. Paxton argues in the suit that the county had gone beyond its legal authority, and that the mailing contract for nearly $400,000 had been improperly awarded without a competitive bidding process.
But local officials have said they are engaging in an effort to expand voter participation, a general civic good.
“There’s very clearly an effort to undermine local authorities,” said Representative Trey Martinez Fischer, a Texas House Democrat from San Antonio who opposed new restrictions on voting that were adopted by the Legislature in the name of preventing voter fraud in 2021. “This is a scare tactic by the attorney general to make it hard to register people to vote.”
Mr. Paxton, in his letters to Bexar and Harris County officials, made clear that his objections stemmed from the belief, held by many hard-right conservatives and an increasing number of other Republicans, that migrants and asylum seekers who are not eligible to vote may still be casting ballots.
“As you are aware, the Biden-Harris administration’s open border policies have saddled Texas — and the entire country — with a wave of illegal immigration,” Mr. Paxton wrote in his letters, adding that it was “more important than ever that we maintain the integrity of our voter rolls and ensure only eligible voters decide our elections.”
The Bexar County judge, Peter Sakai, who is the county’s chief administrative officer but not a judge in the court, said he had been assured that registering noncitizens would “not be allowed” in the effort to register new voters. He said he was confident that the firm selected to handle the mailing, Civic Government Solutions, would not favor Democrats.
The county’s program, Mr. Sakai added, targeted newly arrived residents who were eligible to vote, regardless of party.
Justin Rodriguez, the county commissioner who introduced the measure, called Mr. Paxton’s suit “predictable and disappointing,” describing the attorney general’s notion that the county might register ineligible voters as “completely ridiculous and the furthest from the truth.”
But Grant Moody, the lone Republican county commissioner in Bexar voted against the mailing. For years, he said, the county had not been involved in registering voters, but now, “We are doing it 60 days out from a national election.”
He worried about the mailing firm’s potential political connections. “This is a bad idea,” he said. “It is not the county’s responsibility.”
The county’s election administrator, Jacque Callanen, raised concerns that the volume of new registrants could overwhelm her office. She said in a statement that she was not consulted on the hiring of the mailing firm.
Still, the Bexar County district attorney, Joe Gonzales, who represents county officials in civil cases, said he would vigorously defend the county against Mr. Paxton’s “meritless attempt to stop democracy.”
Mr. Paxton, in his suit, compared the expanded registration plan in Bexar County to an effort in Harris County during the 2020 election to send out vote-by-mail ballot applications to voters who had not requested them. Mr. Paxton sued to block the effort and eventually won at the Texas Supreme Court.
Christian Menefee, the county attorney in Harris County, said that the current situation with voter registrations was different. Texas law allows for the distribution of registration applications, he said. He vowed to defend Harris County’s effort in court if the state files suit there.
Texas already makes it harder to register than some states, he said, by not providing for online registration, for example.
“As we’re working to make this more accessible, now you hear the attorney general of the state of Texas say, ‘No, it’s illegal to print off the form that is authorized by the state and mail it to people,’” said Mr. Menefee, a Democrat.
Still, Harris County officials have yet to agree on the best plan for expanding registration, said Commissioner Rodney Ellis, a Democrat who proposed the registration effort and then decided more work needed to be done. The plan has been set aside, he said, and may not return before the election.
Mr. Ellis said that the failure to move forward on the mailings in Harris County was unrelated to any threat of a lawsuit, “I want everybody to vote, whether they’re a Democrat or a Republican,” he said.
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