DALLAS — Even though Attorney General Ken Paxton had already sued Bexar County for its voter registration efforts, Travis County Judge Andy Brown was still surprised the AG went after him and his county for doing the same thing.
Travis County mailed out voter registration applications to eligible voters. But the Attorney General sued in state court, trying to block those efforts.
The AG’S lawsuit argues that the county and the company it hired to find the names and addresses of eligible, unregistered voters don’t have the authority to do that. Paxton also called the company partisan and said he’s trying to uphold the integrity of our elections.
In response to Paxton’s lawsuit, Travis County is trying to have the case moved to federal court and it filed a separate lawsuit asking a judge to rule that their efforts are legal, so they can proceed unimpeded. Their lawsuit accuses Paxton and Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson of violating the National Voter Registration Act, which they say compels Nelson to stop Paxton from doing what he’s done.
“What we did was we sent out a mailer to eligible voters to give them the opportunity to register to vote. I think we’re right on the law. I think Ken Paxton is wrong on the law,” Judge Brown told us on Inside Texas Politics.
Judge Brown also argues that there is a specific state statute that allows counties to use state funds, known as Chapter 19 funds, to do exactly what they did.
The county asked for an expedited ruling since we’re only weeks away from the election and early voting in Texas begins on October 21.
“We are, frankly, tired of Paxton trying to scare voters in Texas, trying to scare eligible voters out of registering to vote, trying to scare county governments out of doing their job,” the Democrat said.
Judge Brown also discussed a recent Texas Passenger Rail Advisory Committee (TPRAC) meeting aboard an Amtrak train traveling from San Antonio to Austin.
They discussed expanding passenger rail service between Monterrey, Mexico and Austin and how they’ll lobby lawmakers during the upcoming legislative session to expand other services in Texas, between San Antonio, Austin and Dallas in particular.
Texans have long heard talk about expanding high-speed rail in our state, with no proposals ever coming to fruition.
Judge Brown says service expansion between San Antonio, Austin and Dallas is likely to happen over the next few years, because as far as he knows, the main issues center around track condition and adding additional rail capacity, versus imminent domain battles, which are much tougher to resolve.
“I think it’s very realistic that we can work out a deal with Union Pacific, that we can get additional trains and track improvements on that to where people could get from Austin to San Antonio in, I can’t quite do the math in my head, but going 100mph for 70 miles is a lot quicker than you’re doing on I-35 today,” he said.