AUSTIN, Texas — Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and other top Texas Republicans have joined Attorney General Ken Paxton and urged the all-GOP Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to reverse its recent ruling that Paxton can’t prosecute voter fraud unilaterally.
In separate statements Tuesday, Abbott and Patrick chided the state’s highest criminal court for undermining a big push last year by them and the Republican-controlled Legislature to enact “election integrity” changes, which critics have assailed as being designed to suppress the votes of minorities, young people and other blocs that tend to vote Democratic.
“Texas passed the nation’s strongest election-integrity law to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat, cracking down on voter fraud,” Abbott spokeswoman Renae Eze said in a written statement. The attorney general is “Texas’ highest law enforcement officer [and] has constitutional authority to enforce that election-integrity law,” she said.
