I Guess Ken Paxton Struggles to Comprehend Voting Laws as Much as Shield Laws!

Maybe it’s because MAGA won’t shut up about its stupid voter suppression bill, or because the Supreme Court’s successfully carved out the last of the Voting Rights Act, or because the president wants to get rid of ballot rules so long as they don’t apply to him… but it seems the GOP really needs a nice, long refresher on how election laws exist. 

Of course, few would benefit from this lesson as much as the supervillain of civil liberties himself, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R)—who may have been using the wrong voting address for at least two years and six elections, according to a new report by ProPublica and the Texas Tribune. Which really doesn’t come as much of a surprise, given understanding laws was never the AG’s strong suit! 

On Tuesday, ProPublica and the Tribune reported that Paxton—for years—may have been registered under an address he doesn’t actually live at, including during the May runoff that won him the Republican nomination for the Senate race. While it’s not exactly clear where he’s been residing for the two years in question, the outlets obtained records linking him to a home in Denton County since February, an area he’s not registered to vote in. He has, however, since gone to the polls in Collin County twice, and Angela Paxton—who in 2025 filed for divorce on “biblical grounds”—said in her divorce filing that he’d moved out of their Collin County home a year earlier. In other words, the math is not math’ing. 

Ken Paxton is a do as I say, not as I do kind of guy.

— 𝕷𝖚𝖈𝖎𝖋𝖊𝖗 (@LucifersTweetz) July 7, 2026

Currently, Paxton is running in the midterms against Dem. James Talarico. 

Throughout his campaign, Paxton has repeatedly committed to weed out voter fraud, telling voters that his office would “stop at nothing to uncover and stop any illegal voting activity” and opening a tip line. Per three election lawyers that spoke to ProPublica and the Tribune, the AG may have actually violated such “illegal voting activity”—and in the Lone Star State, voting while ineligible is a second-degree felony punishable with up to 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. (As residency is often hard to prove, this is not usually pursued by prosecutors.) 

Speaking to the outlets, a spokesperson for Paxton’s campaign defended the AG’s as “a national leader on election integrity, with a long record of defending Texas election,” and that “attempting to insinuate otherwise and tear him down with a baseless, lie-filled tabloid story is not real reporting.” They didn’t really explain why any of the reportage wasn’t accurate, though.

Paxton’s entire run, however, has been about as embarrassing as his tenure in office—which has been pockmarked with his anti-abortion animus, repeated failures to dismantle shield laws, and throw out spaghetti-at-the-wall lawsuits. A little before the May runoff, he also struck a sweetheart deal that allowed an alleged pedophile to walk free. Again, I guess knowing law was never his strong suit.