(The Hill) — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton will deploy poll watchers to “major counties” across the state on Election Day.
The announcement comes as the capstone to three months of allegations by Texas Republicans that state and national Democrats intend to commit widespread voter fraud — charges for which the state GOP has not provided evidence.
Paxton wrote on Monday that his “Election Day Rapid Response Legal Team” would “defend the ballot box from any bad actors seeking to unduly influence or illegally undermine Texas elections.”
Some GOP-led states will block polling place monitors
These teams, his office said, would act on issues ranging from “ballot shortages, extended polling location closures, and improper extension of voting hours,” to “activist groups who might attempt to influence the election through litigation.”
The state attorney general’s office and secretary state have been fighting with the Department of Justice over the federal attempt to send monitors to “enforce federal voting rights laws” in several key counties across the state — something that Secretary of State Jane Nelson argued was against Texas law.
“Justice Department monitors are not permitted inside a polling place where ballots are being cast or a central counting station where ballots are being counted,” Nelson wrote.
The eight counties in question include two of Texas’s biggest urban counties, as well as the three counties where Paxton’s officers carried out searches of Democratic campaigners — and the Democratic candidate — in the race for a newly-open and strategic seat in the state legislature.
Paxton is a close ally of former President Trump, and he is fighting professional censure from the State Bar of Texas for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Last week on X, he called Tuesday’s election “the most important election of our lifetime.”
“We cannot afford to lose it,” he added at the time.
