Bexar County is moving forward with plans to hire an outside company to find and register potential voters ahead of the 2024 presidential election — something Attorney General Ken Paxton preemptively vowed to sue the county to stop.
The move came after a roughly three-hour discussion in which nearly every elected Republican in Bexar County signed up to raise concern about the potential for the move to help Democrats more than Republicans.
Commissioners voted 3-1-1 in favor of the plan, with Commissioner Grant Moody (Pct. 3) casting the lone “no” vote and Commissioner Tommy Calvert (Pct. 4) abstaining amid concerns about the contract selection process.
Tuesday’s agreement calls for spending $393,000 to hire Civic Government Solutions LLC, which buys data from various sources to create a database of unregistered voters that wouldn’t normally appear in commercial voter files.
The company then mails out prefilled voter registration forms with prepaid return envelopes to those potential voters — the type of work normally done by political parties, campaigns and nonprofits.
But in the midst of various efforts by the state to purge potentially ineligible voters from its rolls, Bexar County is among a number of large urban counties exploring ways to take a bigger role in helping register new ones.
In a county with 1.27 million registered voters, CGS plans to make contact with 210,000 potential new voters ahead of the 2024 election, according to its contract with Bexar County.
In the coming years, it will also contact another 15,000 to 20,000 newly identified residents who’ve moved to the area.
After hearing from at least a dozen local Republicans, Commissioner Justin Rodriguez (Pct. 2), who brought the idea forward, said he didn’t invite a “bus full” of Democrats to make the case for hiring the company, because it would have injected partisanship into a nonpartisan issue.
“This is about democracy … we need for people to somehow have a better, easier way to access the elections department,” Rodriguez said.
Ahead of the meeting, Paxton said in a letter to Bexar County commissioners stating that counties don’t have the authority to print and mail state voter registration forms. If commissioners didn’t abandon the idea, he vowed, “I will see you in court.”
He filed suit Wednesday morning, asking a judge for a temporary injunction to stop a plan he said will “create confusion, facilitate fraud [and] undermine confidence in elections.”
On Tuesday, Larry Roberson, chief of the civil division of the Bexar County District Attorney’s office, dismissed the idea that the county was doing anything illegal.
“Paxton can sue, but I read through the letter,” Roberson said. “I found it to be misleading at best.”
Verifying eligibility
Among those who attended Tuesday’s meeting to discuss the idea was Elections Administrator Jacque Callanen, who has been in her role for 19 years and plans to retire at the end of the year.
Callanen came bearing examples of pre-filled voter registration forms that her office has received from political parties, including some that are flawed, such as one addressed to a voter who was deceased.
When the elections department receives a voter registration form, Callanen said her office submits the information to the Secretary of State, which certifies the person’s eligibility before assigning a voter ID number.
If the application is rejected by the state, her office checks to make sure they entered the information correctly, and then attempts to contact the person to resolve other inconsistencies.
It’s a time-consuming process that’s become more tedious as people send in multiple prefilled forms received from various campaigns and groups, she said. Applications from already registered voters are tossed out as redundant, but they still take time to sort through.
“What I’m asking is … if you go forward with this, I would like you to also authorize staff, money to pay the staff, and money for postage to reach out to these people,” she told commissioners.
Commissioners agreed that they would help find additional funding for her office if needed.
Callanen was named in Paxton’s lawsuit, along with Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai and the four commissioners.
A battle over personal politics
While Paxton is going after the county’s authority to implement such a program, most of Tuesday’s debate focused on whether the idea would help one party over another.
Critics of the idea spent significant time pointing out that the company’s founder and CEO Jeremy Smith has been involved with groups aimed at helping Democrats by finding and turning out likely Democratic voters. He’s even discussed that strategy on various podcasts.
Smith addressed commissioners on Tuesday, saying that his company’s work is apolitical, and was initially designed at the request of state leaders.
“I was asked by the Elections Division of the Secretary of State to create CGS back in 2019 to assist them on all protocol maintenance procedures,” he said. “All of its contracts are nonpartisan, very specifically to address these concerns about public resources.”
He said his company reached out to all 254 counties in Texas, and is currently in different stages of negotiation with about 40 counties and government agencies across the state.
Last week Harris County, which has also talked with CGS, delayed plans to hire a different company for similar work.
Calvert said that should give Bexar County pause, but Roberson said Harris County is in a different situation after the state stepped in to oversee its elections operations.
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect the commissioners court vote was 3-1-1 to contract with a company to register voters, not 3-2.
