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Few Texas Election Fraud Charges Lead To Convictions

Crime and Justice News

Leticia Sanchez was a church deaconess, teacher’s aide and an activist in her Latino community helping register people to vote before she was arrested in 2018 for the first time in her life. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton accused her and three other Hispanic women of forming an “organized voter fraud ring” that targeted elderly voters by applying for mail-in ballots they had not requested. Five years later, the case was dismissed after the state’s highest criminal court ruled Paxton didn’t have the authority to prosecute Sanchez. Even with her record cleared, the cost of being branded a felon was enormous. “It’s been difficult to move forward,” said Sanchez, 63. “We didn’t do anything wrong. We were just helping people.” The church leader’s case fits a pattern under Paxton: Aggressive prosecutions for alleged election fraud crimes that upend lives but result in few cases that go to trial and end in a conviction, reports the Washington Post. The Republican attorney general and his supporters believe election fraud is rampant, and point to the large number of charges filed as proof. Yet many of those charged have stories like Sanchez’s.


Civil rights groups say the charges tend to target Black or Latino voters and volunteers, many of whom are Democrats. The result has been a chilling effect on volunteers and community groups that for decades have worked to increase turnout in a state with one of the nation’s lowest voter participation rates. Critics say the charges are part of a wider effort by predominantly White, Republican state lawmakers to suppress votes in some of fastest growing parts of the state: urban and suburban communities that lean Democrat. “The goal isn’t to get a conviction,” said Chad Dunn of the UCLA Voting Rights Project, who has defended Texan clients against election-fraud claims and won a 2021 case that curbed the attorney general’s prosecutorial power. “It’s to set up a climate of fear around voting. He uses these witch hunts to gain attention and money.”

Paxton’s work in combating alleged voter fraud is back in focus after a spate of state raids on the homes of South Texas “abuelitas,” or older women known for their community work. One of the nation’s largest Latino civil rights organizations has called on the Justice Department to investigate. Critics, both Democrats and Republicans, have become accustomed to the election season rollout: After a contested race result, the attorney general’s election police announce an investigation. Indictments and raids are timed to the run-up to early voting in the next election. New, inexperienced voters and volunteers are scared off.



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