Officials in North Texas have dismissed claims made by Fox News host Maria Bartiromo that migrants were registering to vote outside a driver’s license office near Fort Worth. Despite the lack of evidence, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office announced an investigation into reports of noncitizens allegedly being registered to vote illegally.
According to The Texas Tribune, the Attorney General’s office stated that nonprofit organizations had set up booths outside driver’s license offices to assist with voter registration but did not specify the locations of these offices. However, there was no indication from the office that any laws were broken.
The Texas Department of Public Safety debunked Bartimoro’s claims. Sergeant William Lockridge, a spokesman for the department said the claims were “simply false,” and “kind of racist,” in a statement to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. The department, which manages driver’s license facilities, also stated that voter registration groups are not permitted to operate outside these locations.
Gabriel Rosales, Texas state director for the League of United Latin American Citizens, criticized Paxton’s investigation as a tactic to intimidate Hispanic voters
“I don’t think it violates anything by having them out there,” Rosales told the Tribune. “Republicans see the writing on the wall. They know that if the Hispanic vote comes out, they lose.”
Balitomoro, who only based her claim citing a “friend of mine’s wife,” has a history of spreading conspiracy theories without evidence. For example she spreaded a conspiracy that Dominion Voting systems had rigged its voting machines to take votes away from Donald Trump in the 2020 elections.
Dominion then sued Fox News for defamation, resulting in a $787 million settlement. In the suit, it was revealed that the primary source of Bartiromo’s claims was an email from a Minnesota woman who claimed to be a time-traveler who can talk to the wind and who also claimed that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was actually killed as part of a weeklong human hunting expedition.
In addition, Parker County Republican Chair Brady Gray and Elections Administrator Cricket Miller both confirmed that there were no voter registration tents or booths outside the DPS office in Weatherford. They stated that if there were any such setups, they would have been asked to leave, as it is not allowed. However, Gray stated that he supported Paxton’s investigations into potential voter fraud.
