For more than a decade, Ken Paxton has told Texans that voter fraud is everywhere and that he is the man to stop it. He built a special unit to hunt it. He arrested people over it. In February 2026 he even set up a tip line so Texans could report suspicious voting.

Now a joint investigation by The Texas Tribune and ProPublica has found that Paxton himself may have done the very thing he spent years accusing others of doing: voting from an address where he no longer lives.

What the records show

According to the investigation, Paxton voted in six elections over the past two years using his home in Collin County — even though evidence suggests he moved out of that home back in early 2024.

Here's the timeline the reporters pieced together:

• His wife's 2025 divorce filing says Paxton moved out of the couple's Collin County home in early 2024.
• In February 2026, a trust bought a $2.4 million home in Denton County. One week later, the address on Paxton's blind trust was changed to that new property.
• In March 2026, he voted in the Republican primary using the old Collin County address.
• In May 2026, he voted in the Senate runoff using that same address.

Paxton is still registered to vote in Collin County. He is not registered in Denton County, where the evidence suggests he has actually been living since February.

Texas law does let someone stay registered at an old address if they are only away temporarily and truly intend to return — that's the rule that protects college students and members of the military. But experts told the Tribune that buying a $2.4 million home and moving your affairs there looks like a lot more than a temporary trip.

Election lawyer Beth Stevens put it plainly: "So long as you truly intend to return, I think you're fine. When you start doing things that suggest, 'Oh, I've fully moved. I'm just wink-wink saying I intend to return,' that's when you get into questionable territory."

Former Justice Department voting rights lawyer David Becker said a home "where someone does not live, does not spend the night and can in no way have the intent to continue to reside" would "probably raise red flags in any state."

His own office says this is illegal

This is where the hypocrisy gets hard to miss. Paxton's office has publicly warned Texans that "it is illegal to misrepresent your residence on election records or to establish a residence for the purpose of influencing the outcome of an election."

That's his office's rule. And when he launched his election crackdown in February 2026, Paxton declared: "Free and fair elections are a cornerstone of a thriving republic, and with the authority granted to my office by the Legislature, we will stop at nothing to uncover and stop any illegal voting activity."

Under Texas law, voting when you're not eligible is a second-degree felony — punishable by up to 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. That's the punishment Paxton's own office holds over ordinary Texans.

He has put other people through this

Paxton didn't just talk about voter fraud. He went after people for it — including for the exact thing he now stands accused of.

In 2018, Paxton's voter fraud unit arrested nine people in Edinburg on suspicion of using residential addresses where they did not live to vote in a local election. Those cases fell apart: county prosecutors, acting on Paxton's behalf, later dismissed the charges after failing to win a conviction.

It fits a pattern we've documented before. Paxton's "Election Integrity Unit" spent over 22,000 hours chasing voter fraud after the 2020 election and turned up only 16 cases of false addresses out of 17 million registered voters. And the ACLU found that 72% of the voter fraud prosecutions his office brought targeted people of color. He aimed the full weight of the state at Black and Latino voters over paperwork — while, the new reporting suggests, casting his own ballots from a house he'd already left.

What Paxton says

Paxton's campaign isn't answering the specifics. His spokesperson, Madison Cercy, called the investigation a "baseless, lie-filled tabloid story" but declined to address direct questions about his voter registration.

That's not much of a denial from a man whose entire brand is that voter fraud is serious, common, and worth prosecuting to the fullest.

Why it matters

Ken Paxton is asking Texans to promote him from Attorney General to United States Senator. His pitch has always been that he's the toughest enforcer of the law in the state.

But the rules he enforces for everyone else appear to be rules he doesn't follow himself. He arrested nine people in Edinburg over where they voted from. He set up a tip line and promised to "stop at nothing." And all the while, the record suggests, he was voting from a home he no longer lived in.

It's one more entry in a long list — the securities fraud indictment, the FBI referral from his own deputies, the impeachment, the child sex abuse plea deal his office offered. A prosecutor who keeps ending up on the wrong side of the law. We deserve better.

Source

This post is based on reporting by The Texas Tribune and ProPublica: Ken Paxton vowed to crack down on "illegal voting." He may have violated Texas election law. (Photo illustration: Emily Scherer for The Texas Tribune and ProPublica.)