Texas AG Ken Paxton Will Raid Democrats' Houses Until The Voting Stops
Texas AG Ken Paxton Will Raid Democrats' Houses Until The Voting Stops
If you can’t beat ‘em, raid em!
Ah, America! Land of the voter suppression wherever Republicans feel like their margins are slipping away!
In Texas, Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton recently got some search warrants to raid the houses and loot the devices of House District 80 Democratic candidate Cecilia Castellano and a number of other Latino Democrats, including Manuel Medina, head of Tejano Democrats, the largest Latino Democratic political organization in Texas. Nothing says democracy like kicking down the doors of elderly residents and houses with children in them at 6 a.m., while whooping “ballot harvesting!” and “fraud!”
The raids led to zero arrests, and The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) is asking US Attorney General Merrick Garland to open a Justice Department probe, because WHAT THE FUCK?
Were the search warrants hinky? Oh, you betcha, they were Ken Paxton-level hinky! All based on third-hand information and vibes, man. Also a general belief that voting for Democrats is an inherently illegitimate action.
Paxton’s office has been investigating imaginary fraud for two years — your small-government tax dollars at work, Texas! — prompted by a complaint from the loser of a Democratic primary runoff for a Frio County office.
It started back in 2022, while the loser and her friend were out shopping for tinfoil hats together — or something like that! — and the friend, who totally exists, told the loser that “a woman … has been working for candidates in Frio County for the past 25 to 30 years collecting mail ballots.”
So the loser Did Her Own Research™ and thought it looked like the mystery woman’s handwriting was on multiple ballots. She complained to Ken Paxton that probably this woman must have helped multiple people fill out ballots. And, for those services, alleged the complaining loser, the mystery woman took payoffs from candidates on her daughter’s CashApp. CashApp transactions aren’t public, so how the loser would have any evidence this actually happened (unless the loser committed a crime herself) is unclear. The loser says this woman might have driven some people to the polls, too, which is factcheck legal.
For Paxton, all that was good enough to execute warrants at the crack of dawn on 13 people in Texas, and stick guns in kids’ and elderly people’s faces, because yeehaw, pew pew pew!
Hey, remember that time a certain citizen was keeping America’s war plans in his shitter, and the government knew for a fact that they were there, but it still took a year for the FBI to get a warrant? And they made sure he was not home, just to be polite?
Obligatory to say: non-citizens voting is rare enough that it is not a thing, probably because it’s a crime for which someone could be deported and/or go to jail for five years. And “ballot harvesting” is not some kind of nefarious thing thing, it is helping elderly and disabled people fill out ballots, which is perfectly legal, even in Texas. Though in 2022 they changed their laws to make getting ballot assistance and voting by mail harder, because screw the elderly and disabled unless their name is Greg Abbott is why.
Texas added persnickety requirements like writing a voter’s driver’s license number or Social Security number on the flap of the envelope, and legislating that anyone who helps voters with disabilities must sign an oath swearing they didn’t coerce the voter or accept compensation for assistance. Voters and helpers must sign with ink, no stamps allowed, even if the voter is blind or unable to hold a pen. And if the numbers aren’t right, and/or in the proper place, a ballot gets rejected, which is what happened to 18 percent of mail-in-ballots in Texas’s March primary.
Paxton sure would love to use these new laws to find some of that fraud Republicans have been crying about, too. But following the raids, no one has been charged with anything, in spite of busting up 13 houses and seizing 65 cell phones and 41 computers. Not that a minor detail like that is going to stop Twitter conspiracy theorists for one minute. Maria Bartiromo’s friend’s husband did see some Latino people at the Texas DMV one time, after all!
If there is any actual evidence besides vibes and feels, if there was any point to the raids besides intimidation and taking a candidate’s phone and computers right before an election, Paxton et al. are going to have to make with it soon. Last Friday, a Bexar County district judge granted Medina a temporary protective order and set a September 12 hearing date, and ordered authorities to seal the materials they seized from his home and quit poking through them until the court holds a hearing.
Cecilia Castellano is running for a seat in the 80th district, Uvalde, against former Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin Jr. It’s a hot one because Texas Republicans are itching to pass a school voucher bill next legislative session, so they can funnel tax dollars to private religious schools and help drown public education in a bucket. It’s just one of many services that Texas Republicans would like to provide that are as popular as their dysfunctional power grid.
But if you can suppress the votes, no need to bother with a popularity contest, which is kind of the entire point of everything Republicans do these days, the end.
Ken Paxton has that resting smirkface look shared with Matt Gaetz and a few other truly depraved, irredeemably evil hard right conservatives.
Ta, Marcie. I lived in Houston for 16 months in the mid-1970s. I've never gone back to TX, and more than likely never shall. TX Republicans are the worst Republicans, although these days they have way too much competition.