SAN ANTONIO — This article includes reporting from the Texas Tribune.
Attorney General Ken Paxton's Election Integrity Unit carried out multiple search warrants in three south Texas counties Tuesday, according to a release from his office.
The investigation into election integrity began in 2022, the news release said. The unit reportedly received a referral from the 81st District Attorney Audrey Louis about allegations of fraud and vote harvesting during the 2022 election.
During the last two years of investigating, Paxton's office said there was enough evidence to move forward with obtaining the search warrants. Ken Paxton's news release did not go into detail about the fraud and vote harvesting allegations.
The League of United Latin American Citizens said Friday the raids targeted six of its members, including a Democrat running for a state House seat that covers Uvalde.
Gabriel Rosales, Texas LULAC’s state director, said in a statement that Paxton carried out the raids 11 weeks before the 2024 elections “to suppress the Latino vote through intimidation and any means necessary to tilt the electoral process in favor of his political allies.”
According to one person whose home was raided, Rosales said, law enforcement suggested that he was accused of possessing “illegal voter information” — a claim that he denied and called politically motivated, saying voter information is publicly available.
“There’s no there, there,” Rosales said. “They’re using every tool in the toolbox to intimidate our people from coming out to the polls.”
The attorney general created the Elections Integrity Unit in the wake of the 2020 presidential election when Republicans around the country began focusing resources on investigating election-related matters.
It's unclear if any of those cases resulted in convictions, but one of his probes was spurred by a complaint from a county GOP chair, who lost her reelection bid in a landslide. She then refused to certify the results, citing “an active investigation” by the attorney general.
In at least two of the cases, Paxton’s office unsuccessfully tried to indict election workers, According to the Austin American-Statesman.
This is a developing story and further details will be added as they are received. Check back to this article for updates.