Paxton seeks to block court motor-voter order
Attorney general says he’ll challenge ruling on system.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Friday asked a federal appeals court to block a San Antonio judge’s order that gave state officials 45 days to correct an online voter registration system that was found to violate federal law.
U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia on Monday ordered officials to create a process that lets Texans simultaneously register to vote when they obtain or renew a driver’s license on the Department of Public Safety website.
The current system violates the National Voter Registration Act’s motor-voter provision by adding several hurdles to the registration process, the judge ruled.
Paxton quickly informed the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that he intends to challenge Garcia’s order.
On Friday, Paxton followed with a request for an emergency order blocking Garcia’s 45-day deadline to act.
“An emergency stay is necessary to maintain Texas’ current legislatively enacted voter registration procedures while the 5th Circuit reviews our case,” Paxton said in a written statement. “The district court’s flawed ruling goes way beyond what federal law requires.”
Paxton’s filing argued that Garcia added requirements that are not included in federal law, such as ordering state officials to create a public-education campaign to explain the new voter-registration process.
In addition, Paxton argued that the three voters who sued lacked standing because they were already registered to vote when their lawsuit was filed in 2016.
He also complained that Garcia gave state officials only 45 days to make the changes, saying the state’s current online vendor could not complete changes before its contract expires Sept. 1, and the new vendor would need 90 days to create a process.
Garcia rejected the same arguments in Monday’s order, saying evidence submitted to his court showed that the fixes were feasible and able to be in place well before the November elections.
According to Garcia, the DPS website violates the motor-voter provision — enacted to encourage voter participation by making the registration process easier — because Texans who go online to renew or obtain a driver’s license are directed to a separate page run by the Texas secretary of state, where they must download a voter registration form, print it out and mail it to their county registrar.
Those who handle driver’s license transactions in a DPS office, however, are offered one-stop voter registration, Garcia said. or should have anticipated Gant-Benalcazar would kill when he burglarized the homes.
The relationship between Parlin and Gant-Benalcazar formed weeks before the murders when Gant-Benalcazar was in town from Galveston to visit his sister, who was dating Parlin’s nephew. Parlin told police that Gant-Benalcazar had wanted to kill someone and had obtained ricin — a poison made from castor beans.
In closing arguments, prosecutor Katie Sweeten called the two “a match made in hell.” Gant-Benalcazar, 33, was younger and studied martial arts, she said, adding that Parlin contributed supplies, transportation and targets.
“A perfect, twisted match,” Sweeten said.
Gant-Benalcazar remains in jail after a single juror refused to find him guilty for Blair’s death at his April trial. He’s scheduled to be retried in October. Authorities have not charged him with the Shelton murders because they could not come up with evidence to corroborate statements Parlin made to them that linked Gant-Benalcazar to the attacks.
All the victims were connected to Parlin, a handyman who had a dispute with Blair’s landlord over work he did on the home she rented months before her murder. The Sheltons were patients of Parlin’s wife, a masseuse who worked on them at their home. There was no known dispute, but the Sheltons, in their 80s, were an easy target, prosecutors theorized.
Blair’s sister, Kirsten Mathieson, said, “Kathy was all about love; she was all about the opposite of anything that happened in this courtroom.”
Detectives found jewelry belonging to Blair in the possession of a man who said he got it from Parlin. Another man said he got a shotgun from Parlin that detectives traced to the Sheltons.
Parlin’s lawyers said he was not one to follow the news and had no idea Blair had been killed when he drove Gant-Benalcazar to the Shelton home. In one of several interviews he gave police before his January 2015 arrest, Parlin said he found out about the Shelton murders from his daughter, who saw something about it on Facebook.
Defense attorney Russ Hunt said it’s possible that Gant-Benalcazar never mentioned the murders in conversations with Parlin.
“We can’t just speculate there was a conversation,” Hunt said.
Outside of court, Hunt praised the jury’s hard work but said he’s disappointed in its verdict.