Texas Republicans charged with intimidation after raiding private homes over election fraud | US election law

One of the oldest Latino civil rights organizations in the United States is raising the alarm after the Texas Attorney General's Office searched the homes of several of its members as part of an investigation into election fraud.

The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) wants the Justice Department to investigate raids on at least three of its members in Texas. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement last week that his office had executed several search warrants in Bexar County, which includes San Antonio, and neighboring Frio and Atascosa counties as part of an ongoing, two-year investigation. The office did not provide details of the investigation and did not respond to a request for comment.

No one has been arrested so far and the exact nature of the investigation remains unclear. But the searches themselves were intended to intimidate, Lulac officials said.

“They're trying to intimidate our people who register people,” said Lulac President Roman Palomares. “They're trying to intimidate people, and that's having an impact here. When people read about it, they think, 'My God, if they're doing this to her and I'm a registrar, how are they going to go after me?'”

A Justice Department spokesman said the agency was aware of the matter but declined to comment further.

Lidia Martinez, 87, said nine agents from the attorney general's office showed up at her doorstep at 6 a.m. last Tuesday and searched her home for hours while she watched in her nightgown. She said they told her they were there because she had filed a complaint that seniors had not received their ballots.

Martinez was taken outside in front of her neighbors while officers searched the house, she said. Eventually, officers left with her laptop, her planner and her cellphone.

“I asked them why they were all doing this. And he said because there was fraud,” she said. “I said I'm not doing anything illegal. I'm just helping the seniors.”

Texas has extremely strict rules for voting by mail. Only people age 65 and older are allowed to request a mail-in ballot. Anyone who helps someone request a ballot must fill out a form stating that they helped. Only the voter themselves or a family or household member is allowed to return the ballot.

Paxton's office has operated an entire unit dedicated to prosecuting voter fraud cases for years. The unit has a multimillion-dollar budget but closes very few cases. In the last fiscal year, for example, it had a budget of $2.3 million and handled only four cases, according to the Houston Chronicle.

In 2021, Texas' highest criminal court ruled that Paxton could not prosecute cases unilaterally, but instead had to be invited to investigate by a local district attorney (in the Lulac case, his office said he was invited to investigate by local prosecutor Audrey Louis). Even before that ruling, Paxton had been inflating cases to create the impression that he was uncovering massive fraud in Texas.

Paxton, who filed an unsuccessful lawsuit in the Supreme Court to overturn the 2020 election results, also said last week his office was investigating reports of people registering noncitizens at DMVs, an investigation that appeared to be sparked by a quickly debunked claim by Fox's Maria Bartiromo.

Paxton's investigation comes as Republicans seek to stoke fears of noncitizens voting ahead of this fall's election – an extremely rare occurrence.

A copy of the search warrant for Martinez provided by Lulac shows that officers were directed to collect evidence of violations of Texas law prohibiting the collection of absentee ballots for a fee or “for the purpose of transmitting votes for a particular candidate or measure.” Officers were also directed to collect evidence of a Texas law prohibiting the fraudulent use or possession of personal identification information.

Martinez said officers asked her about other Lulac members and Manuel Medina, a Democratic politician and former chairman of the Bexar County Democratic Party. Medina's home was also searched last week, the Texas Tribune reported. An affidavit from an investigator with the Texas Attorney General's Office obtained by the newspaper said officers had a recording of Medina discussing a plan to collect votes for Cecilia Castellano, a Democrat running for a contested seat in the state House of Representatives.

Castellano said Monday that her home was also searched. Officers showed up at 6 a.m. with flashlights while her son was sleeping, she said.

“This is how the Republican Party works. They create confusion, spread false accusations and waste our taxpayers' money,” she said.