(Texas Scorecard) – Attorney General Ken Paxton has announced a lawsuit against Travis County’s Commissioners Court and Voter Registrar Bruce Elfant for hiring a partisan third-party organization to identify potentially unregistered voters without statutory authority.
Paxton recently sued Bexar County after it moved forward with funding an identical program that would send unsolicited, mass voter registration mailouts to unregistered individuals. He notified Harris County that he would sue if it approved a similar program. Harris then tabled its negotiations.
The Travis lawsuit seeks an injunction to prevent the court “from giving a partisan organization thousands of taxpayer dollars to identify the names and addresses of potentially unregistered voters without statutory authority.”
In June, the court added a “Late Item” to its agenda to “transfer $48,800 from the Allocated Reserve to the Tax Office to assist with a pilot for voter outreach services, and earmark $500,000 from the Allocated Reserve for the Tax Office so that funding may be available should Travis County decide to move forward with procuring additional services to assist with voter outreach.”
Travis County then hired a third-party vendor, Civic Government Solutions, LLC (CGS).
Jeremy Smith, CGS Founder and CEO, has repeatedly claimed nonpartisanship.
Smith recently told Texas Scorecard that CGS is talking with 40 counties across Texas, including Dallas and Comal. He compared CGS to “a localized version of ERIC,” a $1.5 million voter registration program Texas joined in 2020 and left in 2023.
However, CGS and Civitech–a heavily partisan Democrat voter registration organization–share an Austin address, their officers share the same titles, and a web domain lookup of CGS shows Civitech as the registrant, indicating its direct control over CGS.
Civitech’s blog outlines its aims of “targeting” eligible but unregistered likely Democrat voters.
Smith even admitted a Democrat bias and to overseeing both CGS and Civitech before the Bexar County’s Commissioners Court. Paxton’s suit mentions these conflicts of interest.
Paxton argues CGS “was contracted to provide services that Travis County is not authorized by Texas law to perform. The program will create confusion, potentially facilitate fraud, and undermine public trust in the election process.”
“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.”
Travis County spokesperson Hector Nieto told Texas Scorecard the county was disappointed in Paxton’s filing.
“Travis County is committed to encouraging voter participation and we are proud of our outreach efforts that achieve higher voter registration number,” said Nieto. “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.”