Texas hasn’t suffered from the massive 3 AM ballot drops that plagued large Democratic-run cities in 2020, but there have been election irregularities, most notably in Democrat-controlled Harris County. To help remedy the situation, the Texas legislature has passed two separate bills giving the Texas Attorney General power to reign rein in election shenanigans.
First, a bill preventing judges from issuing last minute election rulings without informing the AG.
Both chambers of the Texas Legislature have approved a measure that will require notification to the Texas Office of the Attorney General (OAG) before a judge can issue a temporary restraining order in relation to an election, a bill that was prompted by a series of confusing judicial actions related to Harris County’s fraught 2022 general election.
“It was occasioned by an election in 2022 where a judge in Harris County held open the polls and didn’t tell the other side,” said Rep. Mike Schofield (R-Houston) of his House Bill (HB) 1475 during a committee hearing last month. “So only one party, which had moved for it, knew that the polls were being held open an additional hour.”
“I wish they’d hold a Super Bowl and not tell the other team the game was on, and my team would win,” quipped Schofield.
The new law stipulates that a district court judge considering an election-related TRO must notify the OAG, wait two hours after providing notification before holding a hearing, and permit OAG staff to participate in the hearing remotely. The two-hour delay may be waived by the OAG after notification, but any TROs issued by a judge in violation of the law will be void.
On Election Day in 2022, the Texas Organizing Project, a progressive civil rights group, sought an emergency hearing and temporary restraining order (TRO) to keep 10 Harris County polling locations open for an extra hour. Multiple county locations were delayed in opening that morning, experienced malfunctioning equipment, were missing personnel, or suffered a shortage of ballot paper.
Following a brief hearing early that evening, District Court Judge Dawn Rogers ordered all county polling sites to remain open until 8 p.m.
After learning of the TRO, Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office intervened and requested a reversal of the order, but the judge refused. The OAG then filed an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court of Texas, which reversed the lower court’s TRO just before 8 p.m. and ordered the county to keep the late-cast ballots separate.
During testimony before the House Elections Committee, Ken Moore said that when Rogers issued the TRO, neither the Harris County Republican Party (HCRP), nor the OAG, nor the Texas Secretary of State knew of the court proceedings.
“The AG moved with all haste to try to stop this, and they couldn’t get to the Supreme Court in time to stop the voting going beyond 7:00,” said Moore, who serves as a State Republican Executive Committee member. “A lot of [election] judges didn’t understand that anything after 7:00 is a provisional ballot, so a lot of these were votes that were regular votes that were regular cast and so it created a lot of chaos.”
The Texas House has also moved to restore to attorney general’s power to prosecute election crimes.
The Texas House has passed legislation to restore the state attorney general’s authority to prosecute election-related crimes—an issue that has taken center stage in the wake of a court ruling and a high-stakes political fight within the Republican Party.
House Bill 5138, authored by State Rep. Matt Shaheen (R–Plano), would allow the attorney general to step in and prosecute election law violations if a local prosecutor fails to act within six months of receiving a law enforcement report. The measure passed the House this week and now awaits further action in the Senate.
The bill comes in response to the 2021 State v. Stephens decision by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which held that the attorney general did not have independent authority to bring criminal charges under the Election Code.
The ruling was met with fierce opposition from Attorney General Ken Paxton, who made the issue a central theme in last year’s Republican primaries.
All three Court of Criminal Appeals judges who supported the decision and were up for re-election were defeated by Paxton-endorsed challengers.
Election integrity has been one of the Texas GOP’s top legislative priorities this session, with the party supporting HB 5138. Christine Welborn, president of Advancing Integrity, praised the bill as a necessary step to ensure accountability.
“The relatively low number of convictions for election fraud is not due to a lack of fraud, but a lack of prosecutions by local district attorneys,” said Welborn. “HB 5138 would allow the attorney general to once again step in and protect voters when those DAs fail to act. Laws are meaningless unless they are enforced.”
The Texas Senate passed a similar, but not identical, bill last month, so the two versions need to be reconciled.
Naturally, all sorts of of liberal organizations have come out against these bills, to no avail. It seems that if Democrats can’t cheat, they can’t win in Texas…