by Kayla Guo and Zach Despart, ProPublica
This story was originally published by ProPublica.
Texas state Rep. James Talarico voted in five elections using his parents’ address after purchasing a home for himself nearby, a practice that may have violated state voting laws, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune found.
This comes weeks after Talarico accused Attorney General Ken Paxton, his opponent in the race for U.S. Senate, of voter fraud for similar actions. The news organizations reported in July that Paxton voted using an address where his estranged wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, said he hasn’t lived for two years.
Paxton has made eradicating voter fraud a cornerstone of his time in office by advocating strict enforcement of the law, including in cases against voters who allegedly used false addresses when casting ballots. Paxton’s campaign has said he is a “lawful, registered Texas voter” but has repeatedly declined to answer detailed questions about his residency and voting history.
Piecing together Talarico’s voting history is more difficult than it is for Paxton. Talarico, unlike the attorney general, redacts his address on the Travis County voter rolls under a state law that allows some public officials to shield personal information for safety reasons. But unredacted records Talarico’s campaign provided the newsrooms show that he listed his parents’ address on his voter registration in November 2021.
He purchased a home in June 2022 but did not change his voter registration address until September 2024, the news organizations’ review of Travis County records shows. Talarico’s campaign says he currently lives and is registered to vote at the north Austin home he owns.
Talarico’s campaign declined to answer questions about his residency and voting history. Campaign spokesperson JT Ennis said “right-wing actors” had made “credible threats” about trying to locate Talarico and his family.
Texas law requires that residents register to vote where they live. The provisions of the law, however, are “broad and vague,” said Andrew Cates, a Texas ethics attorney. Courts have previously ruled that there is no single way to determine a voter’s residence, and prosecuting such cases requires proof that a voter “knowingly” or “intentionally” broke the law.
Given this, Cates said he doubts that either Talarico or Paxton committed voter fraud, but he said Paxton should be held to a higher standard, since as the state’s top lawyer he is responsible for enforcing election laws and has aggressively pursued alleged violators. “When the top officials go looking for people to skewer for it, and then do it themselves, it really smacks of hypocrisy,” Cates said.
In 2024, Paxton helped oust judges on Texas’ highest criminal court who prevented him from unilaterally prosecuting election crimes, and two weeks before this year’s primary election, he announced the creation of an election fraud tip line.
“Our Republican secretary of state here in Texas has already said that our elections are safe and secure,” Talarico said at a Houston campaign event last month. “But as our state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton has gone on a voter fraud witch hunt. Turns out, he was committing voter fraud the whole time.”
Last week, Paxton hit back, saying in a news release and on social media that Talarico broke state law, citing reports from conservative outlets suggesting the Democrat had not lived in the district for at least a year when he was elected to the Texas House in 2022. Records provided by Talarico’s campaign appear to show that he did comply with residency requirements during the period scrutinized by those outlets, changing his address three days before the one-year cutoff.
The newsrooms’ findings about Talarico are different because they analyzed the period after the lawmaker purchased a home and found that he continued to vote using his parents’ address, about 6 miles away, in different jurisdictions for some local elections.
Talarico’s campaign shifted blame onto the attorney general. “This is a lame attempt by Ken Paxton to deflect from his own hypocrisy and career of corruption,” Ennis said in a statement.
Paxton was impeached by the Texas House in 2023 and investigated by the Department of Justice over corruption charges; the state Senate acquitted him and the federal case was dropped. Paxton and his campaign again did not answer questions about the news organizations’ finding that he voted six times over a two-year period while registered at a Collin County home where he appeared to no longer live.
Paxton spokesperson Madison Cercy doubled down on accusations that Talarico was ineligible to be elected to his seat and also committed voter fraud. “The only person who has committed voter fraud in the Texas Senate race is James Talarico,” she said, without providing evidence beyond the conservative-outlet reports.
Matthew Wilson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University, said the dueling cases highlight how easy it can be to “run afoul of the letter of the law,” even as Republican lawmakers push for more stringent enforcement of voting restrictions. “I think it could be reasonably used as a charge of hypocrisy against either of them because both of them have condemned the other for an action quite similar to what they themselves appear to have done,” Wilson said.
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