By Kanishka Singh

(Reuters) – Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Wednesday sued one of the state’s most populous counties, asking a court to block its plan of mailing unregistered county residents voter registration forms, a court filing showed.

Bexar County lacks the authority to send out unsolicited registration applications, which county officials are sending to eligible, but unregistered, voters, the lawsuit said.

WHY IT’S IMPORTANT

In the 2020 elections, Democratic President Joe Biden carried the county while Republican former President Donald Trump carried the entire state. Biden won the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

Biden won Bexar County, the state’s fourth most populous county and home to San Antonio, by 18 points, according to the Texas Tribune. Overall, Trump carried the state with 52.1% of the vote compared to Biden’s 46.5%, the newspaper added.

Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, the current Democratic candidate, are locked in a tight race for the presidency, with less than two months to go before the Nov. 5 election.

KEY QUOTES

The county’s actions exceed its “statutory authority,” the lawsuit filing says.

Paxton in his statements in recent days had tried to paint the voter registration plan as a way of registering non-citizens to vote. Supporters of the plan deny that claim and say the step is simply aimed at increasing voter participation.

“We’ve got people who just need to get registered. We don’t tell them who to vote for,” County Commissioner Justin Rodriguez, who brought this idea to local leaders, was quoted as saying in the Washington Post.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)