Paxton’s Attack on Jolt Echoes a Long History of Silencing Latino Political Power, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Paxton’s Attack on Jolt Echoes a Long History of Silencing Latino Political Power

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

December 1, 2025

While I do not pretend to know the particulars beyond what has been reported by Nguyen and Klibanoff in the Express-News (2025), the effort by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to shut down the Jolt initiative—one of the state’s most effective Latino civic-engagement organizations—most certainly fits into a well-established pattern. It echoes a long Texas history of suppressing Latino political power through intimidation, manufactured crises, and the selective use of state authority.

To truly understand this moment, we must see it in its historical and decolonial context. For well over a century, Texas has deployed legal, political, and bureaucratic tools to police and shrink the political power of Latino communities. From poll taxes, white primaries, English-only ballots to literacy tests, voter purges, and now “election integrity” scare tactics, the state has continuously reengineered the political landscape to maintain racial hierarchy.

Today’s version of that old project further includes gerrymandering—most notably the failed attempt, under pressure from Donald Trump, to draw five new congressional districts designed to dilute rising Latino voting power and secure permanent Republican control. That map was ultimately too extreme even for Texas courts, but the message was unmistakable: Latino political participation is to be contained, not cultivated (Guo, 2025).

Paxton’s attack on Jolt follows the same logic. It stems from a thoroughly debunked 2024 social-media rumor alleging that migrants were being registered to vote at driver’s license offices in North Texas—a claim that local officials, including Republican leaders, dismissed outright. Yet Paxton seized on this fiction to launch an intrusive investigation into groups working primarily with Latino voters.

When his initial efforts faltered in court, Paxton simply pivoted, filing a new lawsuit accusing Jolt of orchestrating an “unlawful voter registration scheme,” despite providing no evidence of noncitizen voting. Instead, he targets the organization for conducting voter registration drives at DMV locations—community hubs where working-class Latinos naturally gather. In a telling distortion of Texas election law, he now frames a volunteer’s explanation of the parent-agent provision as evidence of wrongdoing.

The point is intimidation, not truth.

Taken together, these actions reveal a disturbing theory of democracy: Latino civic participation is inherently suspect, and any infrastructure that supports it must be dismantled. Whether through extreme gerrymanders designed to nullify Latino voting strength, or legal assaults on organizations registering Latino youth, the goal is the same—maintain political power by shrinking the electorate.

A decolonial lens makes this continuity visible. Latino civic organizations like Jolt are not just registering voters; they are challenging a longstanding colonial logic that extracts labor while denying civic belonging. When young Latinos organize, vote, and assert political agency, they interrupt the racial order Texas has spent generations protecting. That is the disruption Paxton is attempting to crush.

And this is not new. Texas officials have repeatedly equated Latino civic engagement with disorder or fraud, from the surveillance of Chicano activists in the late 1960s and early 1970s (Contreras, 2025) to the recent attempt to shut down El Paso’s Annunciation House (see Paxton v. Annunciation House, Inc. 2025). Each episode follows the same pattern: when Latinos build power, the state responds by declaring that power illegitimate.

see Contreras (2025)

Jolt is simply the latest target.

That said, it surely concerns the political establishment that approximately 200,000 Latina and Latino youth in Texas turn 18 every year (as Jolt notes on its webpage). This rising generation of Gen Z voters represents a profound demographic shift—one that makes efforts to suppress Latino civic engagement not only predictable, but deeply revealing of the racialized anxieties driving state power.

The lawsuit against Jolt is not about voter fraud—it is about fear. It is about a political establishment that recognizes the demographic reality of Texas and is scrambling to freeze the electorate in place. It is about denying young Latinos the tools they need to participate in public life. It is, at its core, an attempt to preserve a political order that can no longer command the consent of a changing population.

Texas cannot claim to be a democracy while treating the political participation of its largest communities of color as a threat to be neutralized. Jolt’s resistance is not only a legal fight—it is an act of collective self-determination. It affirms what generations of activists, elders, and organizers before us have insisted: we belong here, our voices matter, and our political engagement strengthens, rather than threatens, the fabric of this state. We need and deserve organizations like Jolt that do the essential work of cultivating young leaders, expanding civic participation, and ensuring that Latino communities can exercise the full rights of citizenship. To defend Jolt is to defend democracy itself.

The struggle for Latino political power in Texas is far from over, but the outcome of this case will say much about who this state believes democracy is for.

Reference

Contreras, R. (2025, January 6). Scoop: CIA releases docs on Latino civil-rights-era surveillance, Axios. https://www.axios.com/2025/01/06/cia-releases-docs-latino-civil-rights-era-surveillance?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Guo, K. (2025, July 10). As Texas Republicans prepare for mid-decade redistricting, cautionary tales loom from the past, Texas Tribune. https://www.texastribune.org/2025/07/10/texas-redistricting-congressional-districts-past-mistakes-overreach/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Nguyen, A., & Klibanoff, E. (2025, November 11). Texas Latino civic group sues to block AG Ken Paxton from shutting it down. San Antonio Express-News. https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/texas-latino-civic-group-sues-to-block-ag-ken-21163598.php

Paxton v. Annunciation House, Inc., No. 24-0573 (Tex. Sup. Ct. May 30, 2025). https://law.justia.com/cases/texas/supreme-court/2025/24-0573.html

Texas Latino civic group sues to block AG Ken Paxton from shutting it down

By ALEX NGUYEN and ELEANOR KLIBANOFF/The Texas Tribune,Nov 11, 2025

Jolt Initiative, a nonprofit that aims to increase civic participation among Latinos, is suing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to block his efforts to shut them down. Paxton announced Monday that he was seeking to revoke the nonprofit’s charter, alleging that the group had orchestrated “a systematic, unlawful voter registration scheme.”
This is not the first legal back-and-forth between Jolt and Paxton’s office. Last year, the organization successfully sued to stop the state’s investigation into their voter registration efforts. In the new suit, Jolt’s lawyers argue Paxton’s efforts to shut them down are retaliation. The attorney general’s office has also in recent years targeted other organizations aiding Latinos and migrants, such as the effort to investigate and shut down El Paso-based Annunciation House.

“Jolt is simply the latest target of his unlawful campaign to undermine and silence civil rights groups in Texas,” said Mimi Marziani, a lawyer representing the nonprofit.

The background

In August 2024, Fox News host Maria Bartiromo said on X that a friend had seen organizations registering migrants to vote outside state drivers license facilities in Fort Worth and Weatherford. But local officials, including the Parker County Republican chair, said there was no evidence backing the post.

Bartiromo’s debunked claims still prompted an attorney general investigation into organizations including Jolt.

Jolt then sued for a temporary restraining order, saying that Paxton’s probe would harm the organization as well as put its workers and volunteers at risk. In October 2024, both sides agreed to pause their legal fight and Jolt was allowed to continue its work, while the courts addressed a different lawsuit involving the tool used by Paxton to investigate the group. The attorney general’s office now said in its recent court filing that it has agreed to not issue another subpoena, instead opting to launch a new lawsuit.

In addition, Paxton announced earlier this year that his office is investigating cases of “potential noncitizens” casting more than 200 ballots in 2020 and 2022, which would be around one-thousandth of 1% of the votes cast during these periods.

Meanwhile, Texas counties are looking into more than 2,700 registered voters who were flagged as “potential noncitizens.” At least six of them have been confirmed to be U.S. citizens.

Voters also recently approved a constitutional amendment adding language to the state’s constitution saying that a person who is not a U.S. citizen cannot vote in Texas. Noncitizen voting was already illegal prior to this update.

Why Texas sued

Following Bartiromo’s claims, the attorney general’s office sent an undercover agent to a DMV location near San Antonio to investigate by attempting to register a fake daughter — who wasn’t physically with him — to vote, according to Paxton’s Oct. 23 court filing. It said a Jolt volunteer deputy registrar still instructed the agent on how to register his daughter, despite her absence.

Although when the agent asked for a form to take his daughter, the Jolt volunteer said he could not let the agent have one. The agent said the volunteer then inferred that he could register his daughter to vote, which is illegal, according to the filing.

“I stated in a question format that I couldn’t have one, and (the VDR) replied that since I have her information, I could register her to vote, alluding to being a parent and that I had that right,” the agent wrote. “This was inferring that I could sign her voter registration card, and while (the VDR) made this statement he overtly looked away. This is not only incorrect but illegal per election code.”

Jolt disputed this claim about legality in its court filing.

Paxton’s filing didn’t provide evidence of Jolt registering noncitizens to vote. Instead, it said the group’s decision to hold voter registration drives near DMV locations “illuminates its unlawful motive.”

“This is because U.S. citizens can already register to vote at any DMV with proof of citizenship,” the court document said. “Thus, there is no need for a VDR at such locations.”

Paxton brought the lawsuit in Tarrant County, saying that a “substantial part of the events” underlying its claims took place there.

“JOLT is a radical, partisan operation that has, and continues to, knowingly attempt to corrupt our voter rolls and weaken the voice of lawful Texas voters,” he said in a news release. “I will make sure they face the full force of the law.”

What Jolt says

The nonprofit filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday, asking a judge to stop Paxton’s state lawsuit because it infringes on their rights under the First Amendment and the Voting Rights Act.

In particular, Jolt said in a court filing that its volunteer didn’t do anything wrong because Texas’ election code does allow for a person to appoint their parent as “an agent” to “complete and sign a registration application” for them. The parent must also be a qualified voter or must have submitted a registration application and be eligible to vote, according to the code.

“Here, the State provides very few particularized factual allegations in its Petition to support its Motion for Leave, instead relying upon sweeping but unsupported claims about Jolt’s motives, beliefs and activities,” the group said in its initial response to Paxton’s lawsuit.

Jolt also said it will fight to defend its mission, adding that Paxton is “abusing his authority” in order to stop its voter registration drives.

“This is a systematic effort to dismantle the infrastructure of Latino civic engagement in Texas,” ⁨Jackie Bastard⁩, Jolt’s executive director, said in a news release.

This story was originally published by The Texas Tribune and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.

Minority voters 50% more likely to have ballots rejected under new Texas voting law, study finds

Early voting in Texas begins today through Friday, November 4, 2022. The general election is November 8th. By all means, research your ballot. Compliments of Laura Yeager, here is a nonpartisan research page that provides you with great information on candidates' positions on public education so that you can be an informed voter. She also provides great information on who the elected leaders are in our state who make education-related decisions. Thanks, Laura, for your dedication and hard work on this.

The piece below should affirm, above all else, the need for every person in our state to get out and vote as members of a democracy, particularly since democracy itself is on the ballot. 

-Angela Valenzuela 

Minority voters 50% more likely to have ballots rejected under new Texas voting law, study finds

The state's new mail voting requirements caused nearly 25,000 ballots to be rejected in the March primaries.

by Benjamin Wermund | Oct. 20, 2022 | San Antonio Express-News

WASHINGTON — Voters of color were 50 percent more likely than white voters to have mail ballots rejected under a new Texas law that restricted voting by mail, according to a new study detailing "massive disenfranchisement" under the law.

VOTING HEADACHE: For a Texas family, voting by mail meant 5 applications, 3 different outcomes and a 5-week wait

The law — passed by Texas Republicans in 2021 in the name of election integrity — requires absentee voters to include either a driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number on the ballot. The number has to match what the voter put on their registration form, but advocates say many voters forget which number is on file or overlook it on their ballots.

The requirement caused nearly 25,000 ballots and 12,000 applications for them to be rejected in the March primaries. The rejection rate was 12.4 percent statewide, with a slightly more pronounced rate in Democratic primaries, at 12.9 percent compared with 11.8 percent of Republican ballots, according to figures from the Texas Secretary of State.

An analysis of those rejections by New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice found Latino, Asian and Black voters were significantly more likely to have both applications and ballots rejected under the new requirement.

EARLIER THIS YEAR: Texas woman recounts her mail ballot hassle

The study found that Asian-American voters had either their applications or ballots rejected at a rate of 19 percent. The rejection rate among Black voters was nearly 17 percent, and it was 16 percent for Latino voters. The rejection rate for white voters was less than 12 percent.

The racial disparities were larger for ballot rejections than application rejections. Voters of color were at least 47 percent more likely than white voters to have their ballots rejected. Asian-American and Latino voters were each more than 50 percent more likely to have a ballot rejected than white voters. 

According to the study, more than 15 percent of Asian-American voters had mail ballots rejected. Nearly 15 percent of Latino voters and nearly 14 percent of Black voters had ballots turned down. Just more than 9 percent of white voters saw their ballots rejected. 

"Texas’s S.B. 1 is a prime example of the anti-voter legislation sweeping the nation," the study says. "This analysis makes clear that just one of its many provisions is already causing serious problems in election administration, disenfranchising significant numbers of Americans — especially people of color."

KNOW THE CANDIDATES: Houston Chronicle Voter Guide / San Antonio Express-News Voter Guide

Texas was one of several GOP states that pushed new restrictions after the 2020 elections, when former President Donald Trump falsely claimed widespread fraud cost him the election, due in large part to an increase in mail-in voting. 

Republican lawmakers who supported the legislation have said voters’ troubles are part of a normal learning curve that will eventually improve over time with education. They have said the new rules were needed to bolster election integrity, though Attorney General Ken Paxton's staff spent 20,000 hours looking for voter fraud last year, focusing on the 2020 elections, and didn't uncover anything beyond isolated incidents affecting a handful of votes in an election in which more than 11 million Texans cast ballots.

The law sparked legal challenges, including by the U.S. Department of Justice, and failed attempts by Democrats in Congress to pass new national voting rights legislation. The Brennan Center has also challenged the law in court. 

Texas has among the strictest mail voting laws in the nation. It is one of just 15 states that requires an excuse to vote by mail, and state leaders have resisted changes to make the process easier that have been adopted elsewhere, including allowing voters to apply for mail ballots online and sending ballots to all voters. 

ben.wermund@chron.com

1,913,369 Ballots Thrown Away How Trump did—and will—Disqualify your Vote by Greg Palast

Greg Palast has been at this for a long time, looking closely at voter fraud and the many ways that folks can get robbed of their Constitutional right as citizens to vote in U.S. elections. For this, we don't even need Russians to meddle. All we need is corrupt election officials willing to rob, in particular, people of color who tend to vote democrat, of their vote. 

Read below from Palast's new book titled, How Trump Stole 2020, which very much was a consequence of votes not getting tallied. The example he provides is from Michigan where 87 machines were broken and how a complicit Republican Attorney General thereafter ruled "that if the number of physical ballots did not match the scanner count, these precincts could not be re-counted."

I fear that we're yet again, not prepared for the predictable shenanigans Republican leadership will be up to in impacting the outcome of the next election.  Consider that they're even more desperate than before.

The short-term solution is for an avalanche of votes getting cast such that no amount of voter fraud can overcome it. Longer-term, election reform, including getting rid of the electoral college, is the way to move forward.

-Angela Valenzuela

@GregPalast #election #election2020 #vote #democrats #resist #voteblue #politics #liberal #democrat #usa #impotus #america #biden #bluewave #joebiden #getoutthevote

Media contact:   Ilene Proctor (310) 858-6643 LA 1,913,369 Ballots Thrown Away How Trump did—and will—Disqualify your Vote By Greg Palast, The Palast Investigative Fund It’s official:  1,913,369 ballots were cast but never counted in the 2016 presidential race.  That’s from the US Elections Assistance Commission.   And not just anyone’s ballot gets tossed into the electoral dumpster.   The US Civil Rights Commission took a look at Florida’s throw-away pile and calculated that your chance of having your vote simply go uncounted, "spoiled," is 900% higher if you're Black than if you're white. Trump’s call for an army of 50,000 vigilantes is laughable: some schmuck in a Hawaiian shirt and MAGA cap won’t scare off voters of color.  But 50,000 challengers, challenging every single ballot for Biden — that could succeed. It did for Trump in Michigan in 2016. Here’s how Michigan—and so the Presidency, was stolen four years ago.  This little chapter from How Trump Stole 2020, tells you how they did it in 2016…and can do it again in 2020: Michigan Michigass Here’s what you know: In 2016, Donald Trump won Michigan by 10,704 votes. Officially. Here’s what you don’t know: 75,355 ballots were never counted. That’s official, too. Just “spoilage,” that is, ballots that were, for some technical reason, un-tallied.   But not just anyone’s vote “spoiled.” Most of these vanished votes were cast in Detroit—where only one in ten city residents are white. Motown. Not exactly Trump-ville Exit polls showed Clinton won Michigan. And now the pollsters were apologizing for their “mistake.” I didn’t buy it. If you counted those ballots in the dumpsters in Detroit, Clinton would have won. And if this pattern held in the other two states’ exit polls that reported she won, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, Clinton should have won the Electoral College. I’m not sure what’s wrong with me. The election was over. Hillary and hubby had moved on to lucrative book contracts, six-figure speaking gigs and their “charity.” Trump was triumphant and the country, too, had moved on. But it bothered me, the 75,355 ballots no one counted in Michigan. The usual outlets for my investigations, like Rolling Stone, weren’t bothered either. They had “moved on” too. So I borrowed a few more bucks from my pension plan, begged my readers for some spare change, and bought a ticket for Detroit. To do this investigation, I needed a break. And I got it: a surprise call from Jill Stein. The Green Party Presidential candidate. She offered me a scoop. Stein was ready to raise $9 million for re-counts in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan to prove that Trump lost— that is, if you counted all the votes in those states. She could literally overturn Trump’s election. I broke the story, she raised the $9 million in days, and the recount began. But “recount” is the wrong word. In Michigan, the funds were meant for counting those 75,355 ballots that were never counted in the first place. In Michigan, you vote on paper ballots—which you shove into a scanner to get counted. But a funny thing happened in Detroit: 87 machines broke down, they could not read the ballots. Once in Detroit, I met with information specialist Carlos Garcia. He told me his precinct’s scanner was already busted when he arrived at the opening of voting at 7 a.m. It was finally fixed at 9:30 a.m. He stayed and saw that those ballots cast during the morning vote rush, while the machine was broken, were never run through the scanner, never recorded. That non-count was repeated throughout the city. It was easy to catch . . . because the number of ballots in the broken machines did not match the total of ballots these machines said it counted. But—ready for this?— the Republican Attorney General ruled that if the number of physical ballots did not match the scanner count, these precincts could not be re-counted. Get that? The precincts with the missing count—the ones you’d want to review—were barred from the re-count. Occupied Territories One f’d-up machine in a precinct is bad luck. No big deal. But 87 broken machines, 87 machines not counting thousands of ballots, is a very big deal, an electoral crime wave. A stolen election. And they knew it. Republican state officials knew before Election Day that Detroit’s scanning machines were already busted, dysfunctional or likely not to survive the day. Well before November 2016, the Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey pleaded to fund her budget to replace the bad ballot scanners. But there was a problem: Detroit was bankrupt—and every penny spent had to be approved by “managers,” overlords appointed by the Republican Governor Rick Snyder. In 2016, Detroit was an Occupied Territory, as was Flint, Michigan. In Flint, the State-appointed managers cut the budget for the water system—and poisoned Flint’s kids with lead. The stories of Detroit scanners and the Flint water supply go together. If you’re going to poison someone’s children, you’d better take away their right to vote against the poisoning. The Michigan ballot count was Jim Crow’d by bad scanners, and Trump was triumphant. But Jill Stein was going to spoil the celebration. Her recount would pay for an extraordinary machine that could read those uncounted ballots: the human eyeball. But something funny was happening at the government re-count centers. Whistleblower Late November in Michigan sucks. From a Hampton Inn on a truck route north of the city, it was a long slog through dirty slush and wet snow to meet a whistleblower at a roadhouse bar, and a couple stiff drinks to get her to loosen up, to talk without a stutter or fear on camera. “Sue” told me she faced retribution in her white suburb, even from in-laws who were not happy about her blowing the whistle. Sue is a computer programmer who thought it would be interesting, and just a good thing to do, to volunteer for the recount operation at the county building. She didn’t even have a strong preference in the election. What she experienced disturbed her enormously: We saw a lot of ballots that weren’t originally counted because those don’t scan into the machine. Ballot reviewers were adding previously uncounted ballots to the Clinton column; and Trump operatives were challenging every Clinton vote and every decision for Clinton. They are creating chaos and slowing up the process, and making up nonsense rules to disqualify ballots. At the same time, the Democratic Party had brought in “observers” [who] refused to take part in the ballot count nor even bother to get in the way of the GOP obstructers. Despite all the obstruction, it was clear that if the count went ahead unimpeded, Trump would lose Michigan. So Trump did the only thing he could do: stop the count. from Greg Palast’s new book, How Trump Stole 2020, just out from Random House/7 Stories. For review copies or interviews, Contact Ilene Proctor PR (310) 858-6643 - Los Angeles