I referenced the Texas Constitution. You are correct. My respect for Ken Paxton just went down a couple of notches.
However, this shows a serious flaw in the way Texas power is distributed. If a party manages to gain control of the DA and county attorney in a county, there is virtually no check on what they can do, as the DA and county attorney can simply refuse to prosecute party members.
Perhaps federal statutes could be used to prosecute things such as voter fraud.
Other than appealing to voters to "vote the bums out", have you any suggestions?
That may be, but the converse is true, too: The local DA’s prosecutorial discretion is a check on an overzealous AG or state government. Exactly in the same way we’ve recently relied on elected county sheriffs to resist unconstitutional gun laws.
The suggestion would be to amend the constitution if we want the AG to have that power, but I’m not sure that’s a great idea. So my suggestion is you may need to accept the fact that separation of powers and reliance on elected officials means some crimes go unpunished and you don’t always get what you want. It’s messy, but the alternative is worse.
But we’re only talking about criminal prosecutions here. Candidates still have a civil remedy for contesting election results.
Also, to be clear: The Stephens case that motivated Paxton to challenge the incumbents was a campaign finance case, not an election fraud case.
You mentioned the feds. Certainly, the feds can and do prosecute violation of federal election laws. But the feds generally don’t and shouldn’t control state elections.
In the large Texas cities the “machine” has controlled the voting for many years. They ran out of ballots at all the Republican precincts in Houston, and no one answered the phones when people tried to request more ballots.
Paxton should be able to investigate when the entire county is corrupted by the “machine”.