Elected officials in Texas have repeatedly embraced former President Donald Trump's lies that the 2020 election was "stolen" from him by Democrats engaging in widespread election fraud, even though Trump won the Lone Star State.
Shortly after the 2020 election, the state's Republican legislature passed a severe voter suppression bill designed to widen its Republican margin of victory by targeting communities of color.
Ahead of the deadly failed insurrection carried out by pro-Trump extremists, Texas' far-right Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a bizarre Supreme Court lawsuit against Pennsylvania, urging the Court to throw out its election results. It was near-unanimously thrown out.
Nevertheless, there has been at least one proven case of voter fraud in Texas, and Attorney General Paxton was forced to make good on his promise to pay anyone who came forward with verified allegations of fraud in the state—but it wasn't the fraud for which Paxton was likely hoping.
A Democratic poll worker, Eric Frank, proved that a registered Republican man in his 70s voted twice, prompting Paxton to pay him $25 thousand.
Frank told the Dallas Morning News:
"It's my belief that they were trying to get cases of Democrats doing voter fraud. And that just wasn't the case. This kind of blew up in their face."
Voter fraud is already a statistically insignificant factor in American elections, but a number of fraudulent votes have been cast by Republican voters, like in Texas.
The development generated a wealth of reactions online.
People had to laugh.
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