{"id":386415,"date":"2026-07-25T17:38:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T17:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/386415\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T17:38:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T17:38:08","slug":"ken-paxton-has-long-crusaded-against-voter-fraud-his-senate-rival-now-accuses-him-of-committing-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/386415\/","title":{"rendered":"Ken Paxton has long crusaded against voter fraud. His Senate rival now accuses him of committing it."},"content":{"rendered":"

James Talarico\u2019s comments come after ProPublica and The Texas Tribune found that the attorney general may have broken state law by voting using an address where he no longer appears to live.
By\u00a0Zach Despart<\/a> for The Texas Tribune<\/a> and ProPublica<\/a><\/p>\n

The Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas is trying to turn a key talking point of his Republican opponent against him \u2014 alleging Attorney General Ken Paxton is guilty of the same type of voter fraud he has spent years trying to eliminate.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs our state\u2019s attorney general, Ken Paxton has gone on a voter fraud witch hunt,\u201d state Rep. James Talarico, who is challenging Paxton in the race to replace U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, said during a campaign event in Houston. \u201cTurns out, he was committing voter fraud the whole time, voting illegally in six elections in a row from the wrong address.\u201d<\/p>\n

Talarico\u2019s comments come after\u00a0ProPublica and The Texas Tribune revealed<\/a>\u00a0that Paxton moved out of the home he shared with his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, in 2024 but continued to vote using that address, including during the March Republican primary in which he beat Cornyn. Three election experts told the news organizations that Paxton may have broken state law.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"TexasKen Paxton makes a statement in May 2023 at his office in Austin, Texas. (AP Photo\/Eric Gay)AP<\/p>\n

Last week, the Collin County Democratic Party\u00a0filed a complaint<\/a>\u00a0with the Texas secretary of state, urging that office to investigate Paxton for election fraud.<\/p>\n

Paxton has repeatedly declined to answer the newsrooms\u2019 questions about his voter registration and residency. On Tuesday, he held a rare news conference to tout the endorsement of nearly two dozen sheriffs and attacked Talarico as soft on crime. Talarico denied the charge at his own news conference Wednesday, saying he\u2019d voted for billions of dollars in law enforcement funding as a member of the Legislature.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When a Dallas Morning News political writer asked Paxton why he voted in Collin County, the attorney general shook his head as a campaign aide interceded.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re just going to answer questions on law enforcement today,\u201d the aide said.<\/p>\n

Paxton\u2019s office and campaign did not respond to similar questions on Thursday from ProPublica and the Tribune. They also did not answer questions about Talarico\u2019s comments.<\/p>\n

The fact that Paxton voted in six elections from an address at which he appears not to live may resonate with voters because it reinforces longstanding accusations by critics that he has used his office for personal gain, said Southern Methodist University political science professor Cal Jillson. That was the central theme of the Texas Legislature\u2019s impeachment of Paxton in 2023 on charges of bribery and corruption. The state Senate voted to acquit Paxton.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s been a whole series of legal challenges he\u2019s been able to slip out of, but voters are at least vaguely aware of them,\u201d Jillson said. The latest reporting about his voting practices \u201cis just another example of playing fast and loose with a law you must be familiar with as attorney general,\u201d Jillson said.<\/p>\n

Related | Was Ken Paxton in London for the Fourth of July?<\/a><\/p>\n

Texas law permits voters to temporarily cast ballots using an address where they do not reside, so long as they intend to return. Election lawyers told the newsrooms that it is unlikely Paxton could make such an argument given his ongoing public and acrimonious divorce. (Examples of reasons considered valid include attending an out-of-area college or serving in the military.)<\/p>\n

It is unclear what will happen with the complaint filed against Paxton.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

State law requires the secretary to \u201cpromptly\u201d refer complaints to the attorney general if \u201cthere is reasonable cause to suspect that criminal conduct occurred.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Secretary of State Jane Nelson\u2019s last day in office was Friday, three days after the complaint was filed. Gov. Greg Abbott appointed one of his senior advisers, Robert Howden, to replace her. The office continues to decline to answer questions from reporters, but Collin County Democratic Party Vice Chair Mary Higbe said the secretary of state told her in an email Thursday that the complaint \u201cremains under review by one of our staff attorneys.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The attorney general\u2019s office has not responded to questions about whether it received the complaint or whether it would hire a special prosecutor to investigate it, given that it involves the attorney general himself.<\/p>\n

Related | Ken Paxton\u2019s campaign says he will debate James Talarico<\/a><\/p>\n

The silence from the Republican-led state government suggests an effort to slow-walk investigating Paxton, said Jon Taylor, a political science professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio. He said that\u2019s difficult to square with rhetoric by Paxton and the secretary of state\u2019s office that securing Texas elections is a top priority.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou push the idea that you\u2019re going to be really tough on election wrongdoing, and yet here you are with allegations in which you seem to be uninterested in pursuing,\u201d Taylor said. \u201cThat smacks of rank hypocrisy.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Sign up for our daily top stories newsletter so you don’t miss how it’s being used\u2014and what comes next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"James Talarico\u2019s comments come after ProPublica and The Texas Tribune found that the attorney general may have broken…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386416,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,109251,109253,223,27,136226,136227],"class_list":["post-386415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-jamestalarico","tag-kenpaxton","tag-news","tag-texas","tag-ussenate","tag-voterfraud"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}