New York Attorney General Letitia James leads a coalition of 16 attorneys general urging a federal investigation into Texas’ outrageous raids targeting Latino candidates and organizers, saying that impeached state Attorney General Ken Paxton has used a completely bogus lie as excuse to raid homes and “to inspire fear, chill community organizing, and suppress the vote of minority communities” ahead of a critical election.
“Under the guise of policing this nonexistent widespread fraud, the Texas Attorney General’s Office invaded the homes of Latino candidates and voting rights organizers. State officers even searched the homes of elderly volunteers, terrifying them and seizing their property,” the attorneys general of New York, Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, D.C., Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon and Vermont wrote in the Sept. 12 letter to the Justice Department. “These actions are unfortunately just the latest iteration of a longstanding pattern of using baseless allegations of voter fraud to intimidate voters of color.”
The attorneys general are referencing the at least three senior citizens who were raided by Paxton’s office, including 87-year-old great-grandmother Lidia Martinez, who has spent years educating seniors and veterans in her community on voting registration. Armed agents humiliated her in front of neighbors by refusing to allow her to change out of her nightgown as they searched her home for evidence of alleged wrongdoing.
“I said, ‘what do you want from me? I am an old lady, all I do is help the seniors,’” Ms. Martinez said. Imelda Rodriguez, 73, and Mary Ann Obregon, 80, were also targeted by Paxton’s raids. “The ‘probable cause’ for the raids, according to the warrants, was that a whining loser GOP candidate thought that some handwriting on different ballots looked similar,” Wonkette previously reported. “Seriously, that’s it.”
“The timing of these raids could not be worse,” the attorneys general continued. “We are now a mere two months away from a nationwide election of great consequence. The Texas Attorney General is thus sowing confusion and fear at a dangerous time. Given that, unsurprisingly, no evidence of fraud has been produced and no charges have been filed, it seems likely that the goal was to inspire fear, chill community organizing, and suppress the vote of minority communities.”
We should all be concerned about what’s happening to eligible U.S. citizen voters in Texas. As America’s Voice Senior Research Director Zachary Mueller wrote in his recent blog, Republicans are using the lie that noncitizens are polluting the ballot box as an excuse to suppress our votes and, if they lose in November, “mobilize a segment of the MAGA base to wage another violent assault to overturn winning results.” He calls it the Big Lie 2.0.
“They’re trying to scare new people off from voting,” Rep. Joaquin Castro said during a Sept. 4 press event featuring a number of House members from Texas. “If somebody sees on the news, ‘oh well, somebody got prosecuted because they tried to help their neighbor get a mail ballot delivered or put in the mail or something,’ then it’s more likely that new people, or some new people at least, will get scared off and say, ‘I don’t want to make a mistake, I don’t want to do something that’s going to get me in trouble, and so I’m just not going to go vote. I don’t want to hassle with something that might get me in legal trouble.’”
“So they’re trying to win elections and hang onto power by scaring people, by intimidating them, and by doing everything they can to suppress the vote in Texas,” Rep. Castro continued.
While the threats against eligible U.S. citizen voters in Texas remain very real and ongoing, advocates are trying to keep their eyes on the prize. “The raids on the homes of members of the nation’s oldest Latino civil rights group as part of an election investigation ‘lit a fire’ among some Texas Hispanics, a LULAC leader says,” NBC News reported. LULAC CEO Juan Proaño told the outlet that the group’s members “have gone from shock to anger to resolve and are doubling their commitment to register voters and get them to polls.”
One such event included a get-out-the-vote rally that sought to honor Ms. Martinez. “A brief march also was held during the event, and several participants held signs urging people to vote. One sign had the message: ‘Vote Like Your Grandma Was Ripped Out of Bed,’” San Antonio Express-News reported. “This campaign is a call to action for all women to stand united, turning what, in Lidia’s case, symbolized vulnerability into a powerful act of empowerment,” LULAC said.
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