What the Reporting Found

According to the joint Texas Tribune/ProPublica investigation, Paxton remained registered to vote at the Collin County home in the northern Dallas suburbs — the residence he has long claimed and where Angela Paxton continues to live. Texas Tribune But reporters found evidence that Paxton had moved out roughly a year earlier, as his marriage unraveled into a public divorce.

In mid-February 2026, records showed, a trust bought a roughly 5,000-square-foot home listed for $2.4 million in a gated Denton County community — a property the reporting tied to Paxton. Yet he was not registered to vote there. Instead, he continued to vote using the Collin County address, including in two of 2026's most consequential contests for him personally: the March Republican primary and the May runoff that made him the party's U.S. Senate nominee.

The reporting stopped short of asserting that Paxton had committed a crime. It laid out the facts — the purchase of the Denton County home, the continued Collin County registration, the votes cast — and asked election-law experts what those facts could mean under Texas law.

The Law Paxton May Have Brushed Against

Texas law ties the right to vote to where a person actually resides. Casting a ballot while ineligible — including voting from a county where you no longer live — is not a paperwork technicality: under Texas law, illegal voting is a second-degree felony, punishable by up to 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

The question, experts stressed, is one of intent and genuine residence. Texas allows for people who are temporarily away from home to keep their registration if they intend to return. But that latitude has limits. David Becker, of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, framed the problem this way: Texas Tribune

"I think there would be questions raised about a residence where someone does not live, does not spend the night and can in no way have the intent to continue to reside."

Election lawyer Beth Stevens drew a similar line between a temporary absence and a completed move:

"When you start doing things that suggest, 'Oh, I've fully moved. I'm just wink-wink saying I intend to return,' that's when you get into questionable territory."

The Irony: Texas's Top Voter-Fraud Prosecutor

What gives the story its charge is Paxton's own record. As attorney general, he made the prosecution of alleged voter fraud a signature cause, standing up a dedicated election-integrity effort and pursuing cases across the state. His office has publicly warned Texans that "it is illegal to misrepresent your residence on election records or to establish a residence for the purpose of influencing the outcome of an election." ProPublica

That is precisely the conduct the Tribune/ProPublica reporting probes — the same standard Paxton has invoked against ordinary voters now being asked about the address on his own registration. It fits a broader pattern documented elsewhere on this site, in which Paxton applies to others rules he appears to bend for himself. (See: Abuse of Office and Jan 6 & 2020.)

Paxton's Response

Rather than address the specific findings — the Denton County home, the unchanged registration, the votes cast — Paxton's campaign attacked the reporting itself. A spokesperson, Madison Cercy, said that "attempting to insinuate otherwise and tear him down with a baseless, lie-filled tabloid story is not real reporting." Texas Tribune

The campaign did not offer an alternative account of where Paxton resides, nor explain the gap between the Denton County purchase and his Collin County registration.

Why It Matters

The residency questions are inseparable from two larger stories. The first is the collapse of Paxton's marriage: the move that put his voter registration in doubt appears to have been driven by the separation that led Angela Paxton to file for divorce in July 2025. The second is his campaign for the U.S. Senate, where he faces Democrat James Talarico in the November 2026 general election carrying his full record — now including a felony-grade allegation about the most basic civic act, voting.

No charges have been filed, and the facts as reported may ultimately have an innocent explanation. But for a candidate who has spent years telling other Texans that lying about where you live to vote is a crime, the burden of that explanation now rests with him.