Paxton sues Travis County over approved agenda item regarding voter registration

KXAN (AUSTIN) — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against Travis County leaders Thursday, accusing them of spending public funds on a "partisan" voter registration company, according to the filing.

That company, Civic Government Solutions (CGS), operates a subscription model that provides access to a "proprietary database" of potentially unregistered voters. At the Aug. 27 Travis County Commissioners Court meeting, commissioners introduced and approved the agenda item to contract with CGS for its voter registration effort, the lawsuit stated.

"The Election Code does not empower the voter registrar or any other county official to collect information about private citizens in order to then convince them to register to vote," the lawsuit stated. "The county voter registrar has a few enumerated powers...but nothing in the Election Code gives a voter registrar the right to contract for services that identify and target potentially unregistered voters, an unknown quantity of whom are not even eligible to vote."

Another reason for the lawsuit is the CGS CEO's "prior public comments...about his interest in getting people to vote for progressive candidates," the lawsuit read.

“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,” said Paxton in a Friday press release. “Programs like this invite fraud and reduce public trust in our elections. We will stop them and any other county considering such programs.”

A CGS spokesperson told KXAN that it is committed to giving voters the opportunity to register. They also said that CGS doesn't use "demographic, political, or any other criteria" in how it determines which unregistered voters to contact. Instead, it uses segments based on county and registration status.

The spokesperson also said that if an ineligible voter sends in a form, it would be rejected by the county. They also said it was "concerning that an initiative to empower Texans and strengthen democratic participation is facing such aggressive opposition."

"We identify unregistered individuals within each county and provide them with a voter registration form, along with a pre-addressed, postage-paid envelope to the county registration officials," the spokesperson said. "This process is no different from traditional voter registration drives at community events, campuses, or stores — except that we make it even easier and more efficient by directly reaching unregistered residents."

The lawsuit named Travis County Tax Assessor-Collector Bruce Elfant, County Judge Andy Brown and the four members of the Travis County Commissioners Court as defendants. CGS is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit.

“Travis County is committed to encouraging voter participation and we are proud of our outreach efforts that achieve higher voter registration numbers," said Hector Nieto, a Travis County spokesperson. "We remain steadfast in our responsibility to uphold the integrity of the voter registration process while ensuring that every eligible person has the opportunity to exercise their right to vote. It is disappointing that any statewide elected official would prefer to sow distrust and discourage participation in the electoral process."

Paxton filed a similar lawsuit Wednesday against the Bexar County Commissioners Court after it voted to pay a group to distribute voter registration forms to unregistered people in the county.

“Despite being warned against adopting this blatantly illegal program that would spend taxpayer dollars to mail registration applications to potentially ineligible voters, Bexar County has irresponsibly chosen to violate the law,” Paxton said previously.

The Travis County lawsuit asked for a judge to grant an injunction against the county that would bar it from such a contract.