Another right wing asshole forced on us by the Fox Ministry Of Propaganda.

So what is he afraid of?

Too many voters means he will lose!

Travis did open bidding
They also are obtaining a list which will become Travis County's data, hence it can be shared with the Secretary of State. Also Travis County can do their own verification etc. So, it will be an in-house job.

I think Travis started their project this spring.
Bexar decided to do this in August.

Ken Paxton agrees to community service, paying restitution to avoid trial in securities fraud case

HOUSTON — Prosecutors on Tuesday agreed to drop the securities fraud charges facing Attorney General Ken Paxton if he performs 100 hours of community service and fulfills other conditions of a pretrial agreement, bringing an abrupt end to the nearly nine-year-old felony case that has loomed over the embattled Republican since his early days in office.

The deal, which landed three weeks before Paxton is set to face trial, also requires him to take 15 hours of legal ethics courses and pay restitution to those he is accused of defrauding more than a decade ago when he allegedly solicited investors in a McKinney technology company without disclosing that the firm was paying him to promote its stock. The amount of restitution totals about $271,000, prosecutor Brian Wice said.

Paxton, who will not have to enter a plea under the terms of the agreement, faced the prospect of decades in prison if he had been convicted of fraud. His status as a felon, based in part on an opinion he issued himself, would have likely barred him from running for office in the future.

Paxton attorney Dan Cogdell said the prosecutors “approached us” and Paxton was “happy to agree to the terms of the dismissal.”

https://www.texastribune.org/2024/03/25/ken-paxton-plea-deal-securities-fraud-felony/

Unfortunately, many of the witnesses that defrauded were his "friends"..IYKWIM

He plans to primary John Cornyn in 2026, unless he gets to be Trump's AG....(Lord help us)

Then after the election, they punished the hell out of Harris County and all mail voters.

repugs all riled up. I'm not aware what the Dems are doing is wrong.

They also had "drive through" and 24 hour voting.

Well, this pissed the hell out of the repugs and Paxton.

Bexar County didn't do VBM application to every registered voter because they felt it implicitly the violated the election code. (Harris County Elections is run by elected officials, Bexar County's is run by an election admin who has been there for 20 years..Unfortunately, she is retiring)

Bexar County didn't do the 24 hour voting because they saw issues with it. Same with drive through. (Discussed below)

Well, Paxton went and got his injunction via the Texas Supreme Court and halted the Vote By Mail push because it implicitly violated the election code. He and other Republicans verbally criticized their 24 hour and drive though voting. (Other counties weren't keen about it, however they did expand their hours)

After the election, the Texas legislature made all these laws against voting my mail.
They wrote laws that banned drive through voting.
They wrote laws the limited the number of hours for early voting.
They wrote laws that explicitly banned sending out Vote By Mail Applications by elected officials without a request.

Election officials were banned from publicly discussing Vote By Mail for awhile.

They wrote laws that require Personal ID numbers in every VBM application AND every VBM ballot AND the Personal ID number must be in the SOS/DPS system.

Those who had registered prior to 1995 and had not moved often did not have their ID's in they system unless they had updated their voter registration at the DMV (My info got in the SOS System when I applied for a Real ID in 2020)

Additionally, you now needed a personal ID number to even discuss your mail ballot with election officials. You couldn't "call for a friend"

There are some real logistics/practical issues with 24 hour voting that our elections admin addressed. (You need to have daily totals, but if you are open 24 hours, you can't "wrap up" your work)

There was nothing wrong with drive through voting. However, there should be SOS guidance on how to do it, to assure that you have all the supplies you need at your drive through station. Instead, they banned it. Drive though would have been great in limited settings (bad weather, facilities issues for instance) and would have been a step up from curb side. I believe in the past, some rural locations had done drive through on a very limited basis without repercussions.

The legislature cut back on all the early voting hours, so we can't have early voting more than 10 hours per day the first week and 12 hours per day the second week. I could see cutting back early voting to 18 hours per day, so it gives the election workers time to do their tallies and make sure there were no problems (Number of ballots cast = number of voters checked in etc). Equipment checks etc. But, no they made it so we couldn't stay open until 10 pm.

They created felonies for election judges.
They created additional felonies for elections administrators
They created enhanced poll watcher positions.

Paxton can't do this alone. He can't write laws. He can only attempt to "enforce" laws as he interprets them. Hence, he was able to get an injunction against the VBM application send out.

Paxton is not in this alone. He's got Dan Patrick. He's got Senators: Bettencourt, Bob Hall, Bryan Hughes, Donna Campbell and a huge posse.

The Texas legislature got revenge big time.
___


I could go on and on and my post is full of typos.

Paxton & his equally nutty, opportunistic wife (whose a state senator) are from my county, and we liberals here hate him. As well as Patrick, Cruz, Abbott, the whole gang of idiots running this state. I really hope left leaning folks, independents and sensible moderate republicans will turn out en masse & not only vote for Kamala but for Colin Allred as well. We need TX to turn at least purple.

The lege is still getting revenge on Harris County.
They banned the elections admin position for Harris County.
They put Harris on a "watchlist".


Now I'm afraid Bexar is gonna be in their crosshairs.
We weren't before because our Elections Admin was extremely careful not to draw attention to Bexar County. She ran everything by the book. However, young voter registration activists want the new Elections Admin to be "progressive" and "innovative". They want to new admin to "push the boundaries" of the election code.
I don't think they read the Texas election code.
Many of them are also "free Palestine" protesters. They show up at County Commissioner meetings with keffiyehs equating themselves and the voters to the people of Gaza and the elections admin and the system with "Israel". Our commissioners court is very Democratic (4:1)
We also have our crazy RWingers who want the Election Admin to give them all sorts of access to confidential info. They stalk her. They want to push the boundaries of the election code in another way.
She gets it from both sides!!!

I don't want the lege to do Bexar County, what they did to Harris County.