1. United States
2. Texas
3. Letter

Greetings. I am a voting constituent in rural west Texas. Once again, Republican leadership in Texas has put our state in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. From the NYT 8/25/24: “A Latino civil rights group is asking the Department of Justice to open an investigation into a series of raids conducted on Latino voting activists and political operatives as part of a sprawling voter fraud inquiry by the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton. The League of United Latin American Citizens, one of the nation’s oldest Latino civil rights organizations, said that many of those targeted were Democratic leaders and election volunteers, and that some were older residents. Gabriel Rosales, the director of the group’s Texas chapter, said that officers conducting the raids took cellphones, computers and documents. He called the raids “alarming” and said they were an effort to suppress Latino voters. In a statement last week, Mr. Paxton, a Republican, described the raids, carried out in counties near San Antonio and South Texas, as part of an “ongoing election integrity investigation” that began two years ago to look into allegations of election fraud and vote harvesting. His office has said that it will not comment on the investigation because it is still underway. That investigation is part of a unit, the election integrity unit, which was created as Republican-led states sought to crack down on supposed voter crime after former President Donald J. Trump began making false claims of fraud in the wake of the 2020 election. Experts have found that voter fraud remains rare.” Apparently the concern seems to be handily directed at Democrats in the state. No surprise. Many of them elderly activists. “One of those residents was Lidia Martinez, an 87-year-old retired educator in San Antonio. She said she heard a knock on her door right before 6 a.m. on Tuesday. She thought that maybe a neighbor needed milk and eggs, she said, and she fastened her sleeping gown and opened the door. Nine officers, seven of them men, some with guns in their holsters, then pushed open the door and marched past a living room wall decorated with crucifixes, she said.” What a symbol of bravery our AG is. This is harassment and blatant intimidation against people exercising their freedoms as American citizens. And you have put our law enforcement in the position of bullying old folks. Voter fraud is a political construct, based on lies. It has no legitimacy as a real issue. Taxpayer money and political power is being spent on personal crusades. You and your party continue to abuse your offices. This is the quintessential definition of a witch hunt. So this constituent is glad to have Texas in the headlines for such a reason. The more the country sees how you operate, the less you can get away with. Fingers crossed.