A series of actions taken last week by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton reaffirmed that our state is boosting a dangerous national trend. Paxton issued a vague statement about illegal voting registration that appears to be linked to debunked claims that undocumented immigrants in Parker County were registering to vote.

Paxton has also launched an investigation in Bexar, Frio and Atascosa counties where last week officials raided the homes of Democratic political activists. They woke up elderly election workers at pre-dawn hours in what had to have been the fright of their lives. There is a suspicion that the activists are involved in ballot harvesting, a practice of gathering absentee ballots to deliver them to polling places. Paxton’s office has not given a reason for the search warrants but after the disproportionate raids, activists feel targeted and are demanding a federal inquiry.

[…] Paxton and leading Republicans such as Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick are bent on feeding the confirmation bias of a voter base that now believes American elections are stolen when their side loses.

[…]

Earlier this month, a Fox News personality, Maria Bartiromo, known for spreading false information about the 2020 presidential election, claimed that undocumented migrants were registering to vote outside a Department of Public Safety facility in Weatherford, west of Fort Worth.

[…]

Abbott announced that 1.1 million ineligible voters were removed from the voting rolls. The majority were deceased citizens or suspended voters. If you look closer at his statement, you will learn that roughly 6,500 of those voters were considered noncitizens and about 1,300 apparently voted. That is 0.1% of the ineligible voters. In other words, it is statistically insignificant.

Yes, voter rolls need to be checked and cleared regularly. But there is an inevitable lag that happens in the process. Creating alarm over the integrity of our electoral process is what is actually hurting our democracy.

[Edit typo.]