AUSTIN — Democratic U.S. House members from Texas have asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate a raid by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s office that targeted a nonprofit voter registration group.
The Dallas Morning News reported Aug. 31 on the attorney general’s investigation of Houston Votes, which was accused of election fraud.
The inquiry was closed one year later, with no charges filed.
After the armed raid in 2010, funding for Houston Votes dried up. Its efforts to register more low-income voters in the state’s most populous county, Harris, ended. Records and office equipment seized during the investigation were destroyed under a 2013 court order obtained by Abbott’s office.
In a Sept. 10 letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, the 12 Democratic House members from Texas asked the Justice Department to open an investigation into the matter.
“This raid raises serious concerns about the biased use of state resources to prevent Texans from legally registering to vote,” said the letter to Holder, signed by the 12 House members. “We request that the Department of Justice open an investigation into this matter.”
A Justice Department spokeswoman said the request is being reviewed.
Jerry Strickland, an Abbott spokesman, said in an email: “If the Texas Democratic Congressional delegation is interested in more than political grandstanding and is genuinely concerned with following and enforcing the law, they should demand the Department of Justice investigate Houston Votes’ illegal activity.
“Houston Votes’ own executive director admitted to attorney general investigators that they fraudulently signed voter registrations and illegally collected information to sell to ACORN-linked Project Vote — that’s precisely the kind of illegal activity the Justice Department needs to investigate,” Strickland said.
No one with Houston Votes was charged with a crime.
The News reported that in October 2011 the Harris County district attorney’s office “declined to accept for prosecution the case as prepared by investigators of the Texas attorney general’s office,” according to a court document filed last year.
In the Aug. 31 article in The News, Terese Buess, an assistant Harris County district attorney over the public integrity division, said her office doesn’t discuss cases that don’t result in criminal prosecution.
But “generally, criminal charges are only authorized when there is evidence that establishes probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed,” she added.
Although Abbott’s office obtained a 2013 court order to destroy Houston Votes’ records and office equipment seized in the raid, it released to The News the affidavit used by the attorney general’s investigators to get a search warrant for the raid.
The affidavit by Sgt. Jennifer Croswell offers a different account from what the former executive director of Houston Votes, Sean Caddle, says he told investigators.
For example, the affidavit says Caddle told Croswell he was aware that fraudulent voter registration cards were being collected by canvassers.
But Caddle on Thursday denied saying that to investigators.
“Did I ever sit in a room and say, ‘I know for sure voter fraud was taking place and I just let it happen?’ No,” he said.
