The Harris County Clerk's Office has agreed to remove election advertisements that used demographic-based targeting settings on social media. The agreement is part of a settlement reached with the state of Texas. The settlement also bars the office from reactivating those ad settings for the rest of the election period.
The Office of Attorney General filed a lawsuit Thursday against Harris County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth and her Director of Communications. The lawsuit accused the office of using Meta's advertising tools to target its "Get Out the Vote" ads toward certain racial and ethnic groups while excluding others. The office spent an estimated $43,429 over 30 days on ads with those targeting tags, according to the lawsuit. Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, is on the November ballot. His office said he is recusing himself from the case.
On Thursday night, Hudspeth said the audience tags had been removed "to avoid unnecessary distractions." She said the office's voter outreach efforts were lawful. The Harris County Attorney's Office called the lawsuit a "pathetic political distraction." Seth Chandler, a law professor at the University of Houston Law Center, told KPRC 2 that the state would have needed to prove intent, not just show who saw the ads, to win in court. "It reflects the fact that the government should not be involved in racial profiling," Chandler said.
Harris County has surpassed 1 million early votes ahead of the November 3 election. That is a record for early turnout in a non-presidential election, according to the report.