Voting

Alternet America - The Trump DOJ announced Tuesday it will send federal election monitors to 15 jurisdictions across six states during the 2026 primary season. Civil Rights Division chief Harmeet Dhillon named Arizona, Michigan, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Virginia in a video posted to social media.

Dhillon framed it as business as usual, noting the department sent monitors to nine jurisdictions in 2022 and 27 in 2024. “This is something that DOJ does routinely,” she said.

What is not routine is what landed the same day. The department sent letters to all 50 states and D.C. warning that election officials could face criminal liability if they knowingly keep noncitizens on voter rolls or let them cast ballots.

That campaign has not gone well in court. The DOJ has lost 11 district court cases and its first appeal in its push to force states to hand over unredacted voter rolls. Not one judge has ordered a state to comply.

Alternet America -   Texas says voting in the wrong county is a 20-year felony, which is awkward for the guy who prosecutes them.

ProPublica reported Tuesday that Republican Attorney General and U.S. Senate candidate Ken Paxton voted in six elections while registered at an address where he does not live, his Collin County home. According to filings from his ex-wife, State Senator Angela Paxton, he has not lived there since their divorce two years ago.

Prior reporting linked Paxton to a home in Denton County. If true, that would make him ineligible to vote in Collin County. In Texas, doing so is a second-degree felony punishable by up to $10,000 and up to 20 years in prison.

The voter rolls show Paxton voted in Collin County in the March Republican primary, and again in May when he became his party’s nominee for the U.S. Senate.

David Becker, a former voting rights lawyer, told ProPublica that a residence “where someone does not live, does not spend the night” would raise red flags in any state. He added that the state’s chief law enforcement officer should be expected to know the residency laws.

Especially since Paxton wrote them down. In February, when he announced a tip line for suspected voter fraud, his office shared guidelines requiring registrants to “provide the address where you reside.”