Demand for 2020 Texas Ballots Climbs After AG Paxton Issues Opinion

Texas county elections officials say requests to inspect ballots from the 2020 election are growing after Attorney General Ken Paxton released an opinion last week saying the ballots should be handed over, even though according to federal and state laws, they must be held confidential for 22 months after the election.

And Cameron County elections administrator Remi Garza tells The Houston Chronicle that the requests looked "exactly the same" and may have been part of blanket requests being sent to all of the state's counties.

"It certainly looks like it's coordinated," Garza said, noting he got two of the requests immediately after Paxton issued his opinion, the newspaper reported Friday.

Harris County officials said they've also gotten more than three dozen of the requests.

In the Paxton opinion, which was requested by state Sen. Kelly Hancock and state Rep. Matt Krause, both Republicans from the north part of the state, the attorney general said election officials can establish procedures that will both "accomplish the dual priorities of ballot preservation and public access."

The opinion, Paxton said in a statement, "will help create new processes that can be used to verify our elections have been conducted fairly and without any fraud. My office continues to lead from the front in the battle for election integrity, and we won't back down until our elections are completely and totally secure."

But officials say that the Paxton opinion isn't legally binding but could lead to lawsuits from activists wanting access to the ballots.

Releasing them early could also make it impossible to settle challenges to elections, according to Garza.

"Once the ballots are cast, they're pretty much sacrosanct," he said. "If they're shuffled around or they're mixed up, something that was important to an election challenge could be disturbed or could be altered or lost, or affect the outcome of that challenge."

Meanwhile, Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee said his county will not release the ballots and said Paxton's opinion, which was issued last week, is "distorting the law to fuel conspiracy theories."

"[It is] encouraging reckless behavior that erodes public trust in our democratic process," he said in a statement. "The law is clear that these voted ballots are confidential and it's a crime for anyone to access them unless authorized by law."

He also said Paxton's opinion "directly contradicts" another opinion his office issued in July and an opinion issued by the AG's office more than 30 years ago, both concluding that ballots should be kept confidential for 22 months after an election.

"Our election workers should not have to fear being criminally prosecuted because the attorney general wants to play politics and try to rewrite laws," he said. "Everyone who has closely read the law agrees the ballots are confidential: the Secretary of State's Office, counties across the state, and his own office just a month ago. Harris County will continue to follow Texas law, not the attorney general's 'opinion.'"

Paxton, who led a failed lawsuit to throw out results from four battleground states where President Joe Biden defeated then-President Donald Trump, said his opinion was to "promote transparency in government and integrity in our elections."

Trump took Texas by more than 5 percentage points, and the 2020 results were not contested there.