It’s Texas, so of course the Texas Senate Republicans are trying to rig Ken Paxton’s Senate impeachment trial in his favor — because why should public officials be held accountable for bribery, dereliction of duty, disregard of official duty, and obstruction of justice?
It’s the how that makes this story special.
Funny coincidence: Of the 31 Texas Senators, one of them is Ken Paxton’s wife, Angela Paxton. No one on earth thinks she can be an impartial judge — not even the State Senate — so Senator Paxton has been forced to recuse herself from voting whether to impeach her husband.
So far, so good. But Senate Republicans have decided to count Senator Paxton as if she were voting in determining whether the impeachment vote passes. They are pretending there are 31 voting senators still, rather than 30.
Ken Paxton’s impeachment trial should be decided out of 30 votes — the number of Senators who will actually be voting — not by 31. And counting a recused state senator as the imaginary 31st vote just makes it harder to convict him.
We’ve taken a strong stand against corruption in Texas politics, and we’re still fighting. Now we need to take that stand to the State Senate and demand that they decide Ken Paxton’s impeachment trial out of 30 votes, not 31. Ken Paxton shouldn’t get a head start in trying to avoid punishment for his abuse of office.
We are going to show the Texas Senate Republicans that we’re not happy with their voting games; that there are an awful lot of us; and that we get a vote of our own to hold them accountable for how they act now.
