Texas state Rep. James Talarico voted in five elections using his parents’ address, even after he had purchased his own home nearby, according to a review by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. This practice may have broken state voting rules.
The finding comes weeks after Talarico accused his U.S. Senate race opponent, Attorney General Ken Paxton, of voter fraud for doing something similar. The news outlets had earlier reported that Paxton voted using an address where his estranged wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, said he had not lived for two years.
Paxton has made stopping voter fraud a major focus of his time in office, pushing for strict enforcement of the law, including against voters accused of using false addresses. His campaign has said he is a “lawful, registered Texas voter” but has not answered detailed questions about where he lives and how he has voted.
Talarico’s voting address did not match where he lived
Tracking Talarico’s voting history is harder than tracking Paxton’s. Talarico blacks out his address on the Travis County voter rolls, using a state law that lets some public officials hide personal details for safety reasons. But records his campaign gave the news outlets show that he listed his parents’ address on his voter registration in November 2021.
He bought his own home in June 2022 but did not update his voter registration address until September 2024, according to the news organizations’ review of Travis County records. His campaign has said he now lives and votes at the north Austin home he owns, though the address remains blacked out in public records. Separate reporting has examined Paxton’s own divorce records on his address, which raised similar questions about where he actually lived.
Talarico’s campaign would not answer questions about his residency and voting history, including when he actually started living in the home he purchased. Campaign spokesperson JT Ennis said “right-wing actors” had made “credible threats” about trying to find Talarico and his family.
Texas law says residents must register to vote where they actually live, so they are voting for the officials who represent them. Andrew Cates, a Texas ethics attorney, said the rules around this law are “broad and vague.”
Courts have ruled there is no single way to decide where someone legally lives, and proving a case requires showing a voter “knowingly” or “intentionally” broke the law. Cates said he doubts either Talarico or Paxton committed voter fraud, but added that Paxton should be held to a higher standard because, as the state’s top lawyer, he is responsible for enforcing election laws and has aggressively gone after people accused of breaking them.
“When the top officials go looking for people to skewer for it, and then do it themselves, it really smacks of hypocrisy,” Cates said.
In 2024, Paxton helped remove judges from Texas’ highest criminal court after they blocked him from prosecuting election crimes on his own, reports The Texas Tribune. Two weeks before this year’s primary election, he also announced a new tip line for reporting election fraud.
His office warned that it is illegal to misstate a home address on election records or to set up residency just to affect an election’s outcome. Talarico has used Paxton’s strong stance on election law to accuse him of hypocrisy.
“Our Republican secretary of state here in Texas has already said that our elections are safe and secure,” Talarico said at a Houston campaign event last month. “But as our state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton has gone on a voter fraud witch hunt. Turns out, he was committing voter fraud the whole time.”
Paxton responded last week in a news release and on social media, saying Talarico broke state law. He pointed to reports from conservative news outlets claiming Talarico had not lived in his district for at least a year before he was elected to the Texas House in 2022. Paxton said Talarico “blatantly committed election fraud showing a complete disregard for Texas residency requirements.”
Records from Talarico’s campaign appear to show he actually followed residency rules during that specific period. In October 2021, Talarico said he would move to the area where he grew up after Republicans redrew his House district.
He updated his address to his parents’ home in the new district on his voter registration, his driver’s license, and with the U.S. Postal Service on Nov. 5, 2021, three days before a one-year deadline that would have made him ineligible to run for the seat. His campaign also provided a receipt showing he rented a moving truck that same day.
The news organizations’ new findings are different, since they looked at the period after Talarico bought his own home and found he kept voting using his parents’ address instead. His house sits in the same county as his parents’ home, about six miles away, and remains within the state House district he represents, though it falls under different local election jurisdictions.
Asked about this gap between his voter registration and where he actually lived, Talarico’s campaign turned the focus back on Paxton. “This is a lame attempt by Ken Paxton to deflect from his own hypocrisy and career of corruption,” Ennis said in a statement, referencing Paxton’s past legal troubles.
Paxton was impeached by the Texas House in 2023 and investigated by the Department of Justice over corruption charges. The state Senate later acquitted him, and the federal government dropped its case. He also spent nearly nine years under indictment on felony securities fraud charges that were dropped in 2024.
Paxton and his campaign did not answer questions about the finding that he voted six times over two years while registered at a Collin County home where he no longer appeared to live. Reporting has since linked him, along with a woman believed to be his girlfriend, to a home in neighboring Denton County since February.
When Paxton faced questions about his properties, he did not respond. Because the Denton County home is in a different county, voters there choose a different set of local officials than those in Collin County.
Paxton spokesperson Madison Cercy repeated the accusation that Talarico was ineligible for his seat and had committed voter fraud, saying, “The only person who has committed voter fraud in the Texas Senate race is James Talarico.” She did not provide evidence beyond the earlier reports from conservative outlets.
Matthew Wilson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University, said both cases show how easy it can be to break voting laws, even as Republican lawmakers push for tougher enforcement. “I think it could be reasonably used as a charge of hypocrisy against either of them because both of them have condemned the other for an action quite similar to what they themselves appear to have done,” Wilson said.
Published: Aug 9, 2026 12:30 pm