Announcing the launch of a tip line for citizens who believe they are witnessing illegal electoral activity, Texas attorney general Ken Paxton penned a tongue twister. In a press release, he argued that the “significant growth of the noncitizen population in Texas and a pattern of partisan efforts to illegally weaponize voter registration and the voting process to manipulate electoral outcomes have created urgent risks to local, state, and federal elections.”
The statement was characteristically short on precision. By “noncitizen population,” Paxton likely refers to undocumented immigrants, not legal residents, who’ve made up roughly the same percentage of the state’s population since early in the Trump administration. But according to data published by the Pew Research Center in July, the population of undocumented Texans peaked in 2011, at an estimated 1.7 million; since then, the number has hovered steadily between 1.55 million (a low achieved in 2019) and 1.65 million (in 2022, the most recent year for which data is available). The percentage of undocumented Texans was largely the same in 2019 and 2022, and Paxton offered no evidence that it’s grown dramatically since 2022.
Paxton’s passion for discouraging voter registration doesn’t stop with the tip line. On September 2, he sent letters to county officials tasked with overseeing voter registration in Bexar and Harris Counties (home to San Antonio and Houston, respectively). He warned local leaders against mailing voter-registration forms to Texans who aren’t registered to cast ballots, writing that county officials lacked the “statutory authority” to do so and might be inducing crime, on the theory that an ineligible voter might fill out a registration form he or she received. Four days later, Paxton sued officials in Travis County, centered in Austin, over the contracting of a third-party vendor to identify and contact county residents who aren’t registered to vote. Paxton claimed that the organization, Austin-based Civic Government Solutions, which provides tools for voter outreach, is a “partisan actor” and that using taxpayer funds to pay for its services is therefore illegal.
While independent monitors have found little evidence of voter fraud in Texas, given that law enforcement seems to be making an issue of it, we’ll try to break down what’s legal in voter registration, what’s not, and what lives in the gray area.
Is it legal to hold a voter-registration drive?
“Voter-registration drive” isn’t a legal term, but it generally refers to the practice of volunteer deputy registrars setting up at a location where they’re likely to encounter eligible voters, having those potential voters complete registration forms, then submitting the documents to the state for approval. This is legal, and it has long been considered a civic service. (Volunteer deputy registrars cannot be paid for their services.)
Any U.S. citizen who is at least eighteen and resides in Texas can become a registrar, with only a few exceptions. That includes partisan actors and candidates. Eligible individuals are free to set up outside a gathering spot—say, a county fair, football stadium, or movie theater—to collect registration forms. They shouldn’t do this on private property without the permission of the owner, but that’s not a matter of election law, just simple property rights.
Paxton’s stated concern about “a pattern of partisan efforts to illegally weaponize voter registration,” however, might give some registrars pause about whether participating in a voter drive might put them at risk of prosecution from the state. Those concerns wouldn’t be entirely unfounded; in late August, Paxton announced that his office’s Election Integrity Unit had conducted undercover operations to investigate whether registration drives had been taking place outside Department of Public Safety driver’s license offices, and whether those drives may have been intended to register noncitizens to vote.
“Texans are deeply troubled by the possibility that organizations purporting to assist with voter registration are illegally registering noncitizens to vote in our elections,” Paxton wrote. Missing from that statement, released after the undercover operations were well underway, was any indication that the AG’s office had obtained evidence that such activity was happening. Instead, Paxton argued that citizens applying for driver’s licenses could register to vote inside DPS offices, and that it was thus inherently suspicious for any citizen to do so outside. Notably, nothing in Texas law forbids registrars from holding drives at locations the attorney general feels may be redundant.
Paxton has yet to target voter-registration drives at other types of locations. But, given his zeal to crack down on efforts to expand ballot access, individuals who hold events should be aware that it’s possible they’ll end up facing potential criminal investigations anyway—reasonable interpretation of the law be damned.
Is it legal for a noncitizen to register to vote?
No.
The voter-registration application form, a standardized document created by the Texas Secretary of State, makes it clear that noncitizens are not eligible to vote or to register to do so. The state communicates that information three times on the single-page form, including in a box applicants must check that reads “If you checked ‘No’ . . . do not complete this form.” Another section, which must be signed, indicates that filling out the form if ineligible—say, because you’re undocumented—can carry a penalty of up to $4,000 and/or as long as a year in prison.
Is it legal for a volunteer registrar to submit a registration form completed by a noncitizen?
Yes. The state’s guidance for volunteer deputy registrars explicitly states that they cannot determine a voter’s eligibility themselves.
The responsibility for determining eligibility lies with the county registrar—in most of Texas, either the elected county clerk or the tax assessor—while the responsibility for maintaining the list of eligible voters lies with the secretary of state’s office. Volunteer deputy registrars cannot be charged with a crime merely for submitting to the state a voter-registration form from an ineligible Texan. “The registrar isn’t responsible for someone else’s perjury,” Donna Garcia Davidson, a Texas election law expert and former general counsel for the Republican Party of Texas, said.
It is potentially illegal, however, to induce someone who is not eligible to vote to register under false pretenses. A registrar cannot, for example, tell an applicant not to worry about the multiple places on the form where they must attest to their citizenship.
Does making a voter-registration form available to an ineligible voter constitute illegal inducement to commit a crime?
Nonpartisan voting-rights experts do not believe so, but Paxton’s office has made the argument that mailing forms to potentially ineligible voters is illegal. In a press release about his legal challenge to Bexar County’s mass mailing, Paxton claimed that “the distribution of forms to unverified recipients could induce ineligible people—such as felons and noncitizens—to commit a crime by attempting to register to vote.”
Kate Huddleston, a lawyer with the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan voting-rights organization, told Texas Monthly that the argument “makes no sense on its face.” The voter-registration form, she noted, is publicly available, is the only means for any eligible voter to register, and clearly states the criteria for voter eligibility. “The idea that mailing that out is somehow inducing people who are not eligible to vote to do so is outrageous,” Huddleston said. “The only reason you would make that argument is if you want to discourage people from registering to vote.”
What is Paxton referring to by “partisan efforts to illegally weaponize voter registration”?
Paxton’s office doesn’t clarify or offer any additional details. It issued an advisory for voters to help identify potentially illegal voting behaviors, but that guidance makes no reference to registration besides reiterating that it’s illegal to sign up to vote if you’re not a citizen.
What other voting-related activities has Paxton identified as illegal?
Paxton singles out a small number of violations in the Texas Election Code in his advisory. In addition to falsely claiming citizenship, it’s also illegal to falsify your residence with the intention of influencing an election, say by claiming to live in a district where you don’t so you can vote for a candidate there. Outside of engaging in those activities, a Texan signing a registration form or casting a ballot runs at little risk of violating election law.
But Paxton’s advisory does note other ways individuals could potentially run afoul of the AG’s office. Specifically, it notes that “vote harvesting” violates the law. “Harvesting” is a practice by which a partisan actor attempts to help voters (usually those eligible to vote by mail) fill out their ballots. A hypothetical example of this would be someone hired by a campaign going room-to-room at an assisted living facility to help residents fill out their forms, with the intention of marking those ballots in favor of the assistant’s preferred candidate. The advisory notes that it’s similarly illegal to attempt to influence the vote of someone with disabilities. We’ll add that it’s also against the law to fill out the mail-in ballot for a person who’s died.
Notably, “harvesting” is entirely different from a voter-registration drive, or an effort to drive eligible, registered voters to the polls on Election Day. By including guidance around vote harvesting in a letter about voter-registration drives, Paxton appears to be conflating the two things.
How often do these illegal voting activities occur?
Almost never.
Huddleston describes voter fraud as “vanishingly rare.” Evidence supports her claim. According to the Heritage Foundation—the right-wing think tank most recently known for publishing the right-wing Project 2025 plan—there were just 103 proven cases of voter fraud in Texas in the seventeen-year period between 2005 and 2022, during which Texans cast well over 100 million ballots. The Secretary of State oversaw 45 elections in that time, meaning that on average, there were fewer than three cases of fraud per election.
To prevent fraud in such small numbers from occurring again, Paxton has marshaled the full force of his office at great taxpayer expense.
