Texas Settles With Harris County's Clerk Over Election Ads Targeted by Race — the Ads Come Down and the Settings Stay Off
The Attorney General's office says the county's 'Get Out the Vote' ads were aimed at voters by race and ethnicity through Meta's tools. Under the agreement, they are removed — one day before the election they were meant to influence.
Texas has settled its case against the Harris County Clerk's Office over election advertising, the Office of the Attorney General announced in a release reported Nov. 2 by Texas Border Business and read in full this cycle. Under the secured agreement, the Clerk's Office will remove election advertisements that used race-based targeting settings, and it is barred from reactivating those settings during the applicable election period.
The case began when the Attorney General's office sued the Harris County Clerk and the Clerk's Director of Communications after discovering, in the state's account, that the office had paid to target election advertisements based on race and ethnicity. The Clerk's Office used Meta's advertising tools to target its 'Get Out the Vote' advertisements toward certain racial and ethnic groups while excluding others, according to the announcement. Election outreach aimed at some voters and withheld from others, on the basis of race, is what the state says it has now stopped.
One detail of the case was noted in the announcement itself: because Attorney General Ken Paxton is a candidate on the November ballot, he recused himself from the lawsuit, and the action was brought by the state of Texas through the Office of the Attorney General. Paxton is the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate on Tuesday's ballot.
The settlement lands on the eve of the election it concerns. Harris County is the state's largest county electorate, and its clerk runs its elections; the ads at issue were get-out-the-vote messages for this cycle. With the agreement in place the day before polls open, the practical effect is simple to state: whatever targeting was used is off, the ads are down, and Tuesday's voting in Harris County proceeds without them.
