Ken Paxton has voted in six elections over the past two years from a house in Collin County that his wife says he moved out of in June 2024. Two of those ballots were cast this year, in the March Republican primary in which he beat John Cornyn and in the May runoff that made him the Republican nominee for the United States Senate. I’m going to lay this out the way a prosecutor would lay it out for a jury: the law first, then the record, then what this man has done to other Texans for less, then who can charge him.

Texas has required a voter to register at the address where they actually live since the Election Code was written in 1985, and Paxton’s office restated that rule in its own advisory this February. Section 1.015 of the code defines residence as domicile, the fixed place of habitation a person intends to return to after any temporary absence. Section 64.012 makes it a crime to knowingly or intentionally vote in an election in which the person knows they are not eligible, and the Legislature made that a felony of the second degree effective September 1, 2023. The punishment is two to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000. Each county elects its own slate of officials, which is the reason the law requires a voter to register where they actually live. The one exception is a temporary absence with an intent to return, the rule that lets a college student or a deployed airman keep voting at home.

The address Paxton is registered at belongs to a house in Collin County that he and his wife own and that she still lives in. State Senator Angela Paxton said in a 2025 divorce filing, in which she accused him of adultery, that he moved out of that home a year earlier, and a source close to the family says he has not moved back. In mid-February of this year a trust bought a 5,000-square-foot home listed for $2.4 million in a gated community in Denton County. The blind trust the Paxtons share had listed a Collin County office building as its address for years; that address changed to the Denton County house a week after the purchase. Angela Paxton says she has no connection to the house or the trust that bought it. A ProPublica reporter put a letter in the mailbox in June and saw an envelope addressed to Warren Paxton, which is the attorney general’s given name. That same week Paxton recorded a podcast with Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick seated in front of a fireplace and mantle that match the home’s real estate listing, and a resident of the community told reporters they had seen him there. Paxton is not registered to vote in Denton County. Since February he has voted twice in Collin County.

A residency prosecution has to prove the voter knew they no longer lived at the address, and the divorce record proves it for this one. Beth Stevens, an election lawyer who worked for the Harris County clerk and the Texas Civil Rights Project, told ProPublica the temporary-absence rule protects anyone who truly intends to return, but stops protecting someone who has fully moved and is “wink-wink saying I intend to return.” David Becker, a former Justice Department voting rights lawyer, said a residence where a person does not sleep and can in no way intend to return would raise red flags in any state. A man in a public, contested divorce from the woman who still lives in the house cannot tell a jury he plans to move back in.

The proof of knowledge is his own press release. Two weeks before the March primary, Paxton announced a voter fraud tip line and said his office would “stop at nothing to uncover and stop any illegal voting activity.” The announcement linked to an election advisory from his office that says “You must register to vote using the address where you reside” and that it is illegal to misrepresent your residence on election records. He published those words in February and cast a ballot from the Collin County address in the March primary. A prosecutor has to prove he knew the law, but it seems like Paxton would have a hard time explaining how he didn’t know the law based on his professional role and conduct around these exact statutes.

To put it simply, Ken Paxton has spent eight years arresting Texans for the offense he now appears to have committed.

• In 2018 his Election Fraud Unit arrested nine people in Edinburg on suspicion of voting from addresses where they did not live. His release stated that voting with a fraudulent residence address is a second-degree felony and quoted him saying each illegal vote silences a law-abiding voter. Prosecutors later dismissed the charges after a jury acquitted Richard Molina, the mayoral candidate charged with organizing the scheme.

• The same 2018 release boasted that his unit had prosecuted 33 defendants for 97 election fraud violations in a single year.

• In July 2021 he ordered the arrest of Hervis Rogers, a Houston man who had waited six hours at Texas Southern University to vote in the March 2020 primary and who said he did not know his parole made him ineligible. Rogers faced two to 20 years in prison at over 60 years old. A Montgomery County judge dismissed the case in October 2022 after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals held that the attorney general cannot prosecute election crimes on his own.

• In September his office joined federal agents in announcing the arrest of seven noncitizens charged in federal voting cases, and he described them as foreigners who attempted to cheat the system.

Since December 2025, a state law has required Paxton’s own office to prosecute election crimes, and the two ballots he cast this year fall under it. Senate Bill 12, which Governor Greg Abbott signed in September 2025, gives the attorney general jurisdiction over election crimes committed after it took effect. The Collin County Democratic Party filed a complaint on July 14 with the secretary of state, who must refer it to the attorney general if there is reasonable cause to suspect a crime, which means to Paxton. In July, Paxton’s office did not answer questions from ProPublica and the Texas Tribune about whether the office had received the complaint or would hire a special prosecutor to handle it.

The Court of Criminal Appeals ruling that ended the Hervis Rogers case still stands, and Senate Bill 12 was written to challenge it, so the case also belongs to the district attorney in the county where the ballots were cast. That is Collin County Criminal District Attorney Greg Willis. The Collin County Democratic Party notified his office of the complaint in July, but Willis has announced no action since. Willis is Paxton’s longtime friend and former business partner, and in 2015 he recused himself from Paxton’s securities fraud case, after which a district judge appointed two Houston attorneys as special prosecutors in his place. A recusal now would follow the same steps, with a Collin County district judge appointing an attorney pro tem who can ask the Texas Rangers, the agency that assisted Paxton’s own unit in Edinburg, to investigate.

Residency prosecutions usually fail on intent, but Paxton has supplied the intent himself: a divorce filing that fixes the date he left, a trust address changed to the new house a week after closing, his mail in its box, and an advisory in his own name warning Texans against the exact thing he then did. The Hervis Rogers case shows what his office believed the statute was worth when the defendant was a Black man on parole who stood in line for six hours. The Edinburg arrests show his office believed voting from the wrong address was a felony worth a press release. The same statute, with better evidence, now sits on Greg Willis’s desk.

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CALL TO ACTION

Collin County residents can write to the Collin County Criminal District Attorney’s office asking Greg Willis to recuse himself from the complaint against Ken Paxton and to ask a Collin County district judge to appoint an attorney pro tem, and can attach the ProPublica and Texas Tribune reporting as the record. Texans outside Collin County can send Willis’s office the same request, because Paxton’s name is on the Senate ballot in every county in the state.

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