Harris County is the biggest county in Texas. Its elections office spent $43,429 on a month of Facebook and Instagram ads reminding people to vote. On Thursday, the office of Ken Paxton went to court to get those ads shut down.

The Texas Attorney General's office sued Harris County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth and her staff, saying the county broke the Texas Constitution because the ads were aimed at Black, Latino and Asian voters. The state asked a judge to turn the ads off, or strip out the targeting, and to block the county from doing it again.

The state's own lawyers pointed out the timing: the request came one day before early voting ended.

Paxton is the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, running against Democrat James Talarico. His office says he recused himself from this lawsuit because he is on the November ballot. But it is his office, his staff, and the same playbook his office has run against Texas's big Democratic counties for years.

What the ads actually did

These were not campaign ads. They did not tell anyone who to vote for. They were "voter awareness" ads from the county elections office, the people whose job is to run the election.

The lawsuit points to targeting tags in Meta's ad library, such as "African-American literature," "Hispanic kitchen" and "Latin dance." "Troublingly, these voter awareness ads intentionally target certain racial and ethnic groups," the complaint says, "but do not target other demographics."

In other words, the state's complaint is that a county tried to make sure more Black, Latino and Asian residents knew there was an election. The ad was still running on the clerk's Facebook page Thursday evening, and Hudspeth had not yet responded when the suit was reported.

This is a pattern, not a one-off

Paxton's office has sued Harris County over voter outreach before, and it has sued other big counties too.

• 2020: Paxton sued Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins to stop the county from mailing mail-ballot applications to more than two million registered voters. Hollins said at the time: "Providing more information and resources to voters is a good thing, not a bad thing."
• 2024: Paxton sued Bexar County to block a plan to mail 210,000 voter registration applications, and sued Travis County over a plan to find eligible people who weren't registered. He sent Harris County a letter threatening to sue over a similar mailing.

Every one of those fights was about the same thing: a local government trying to get more eligible people to register or vote, and Paxton's office trying to stop it.

Texas groups are already afraid to help voters

This lawsuit lands on top of a state where helping people vote has become a legal risk.

Texas's 2021 voting law, SB1, made it a felony to be paid for helping voters fill in their ballots, punishable by up to 10 years in prison. The Texas Tribune reports that Paxton's office has "investigated and prosecuted voting rights advocacy groups and organizers in heavily Latino communities across the state."

The result: groups that used to help people vote now turn them away. LUPE, a Rio Grande Valley group that helps about 30,000 people a year, told the Tribune its workers had to turn away a 67-year-old woman who came in for help with her blind husband's mail ballot. "We literally have to turn them away," said its director, Tania Chavez Camacho.

When Paxton won back other parts of that same law in court, we covered how the rules he defended had rejected one in seven Texas mail voters in 2022.

A record built on "fraud" he can't find

Paxton has made a career out of telling Texans their elections are full of cheaters. The numbers don't back him up. After more than a year of his office hunting noncitizen voters, three people have been prosecuted — and some of the people he was handed were already listed as citizens.

Meanwhile, a Texas Tribune and ProPublica investigation found Paxton himself appears to have voted six times from a home he no longer lives in.

So the man whose office polices "illegal voting" may have a voting problem of his own, and the people his office goes after are county clerks running "go vote" ads.

What the record shows

Ken Paxton's office sued Harris County a day before early voting ended to shut down $43,429 in county ads reminding residents to vote, which it says were targeted at Black, Latino and Asian residents. Paxton says he stepped aside from this one case because he is on the ballot, but his office has sued or threatened Harris, Bexar and Travis counties before for trying to reach voters with mail-ballot applications or voter registration. Under the voting law his office enforces, Texas groups now turn away voters who ask for help.

Source

Texas Sues Harris County Clerk Over Alleged Targeted Voter Ads, Gavin J. Quinton, The Washington Sun, October 29, 2026. See also the Houston Chronicle's report.