Intimidation, harassment and threats against elections administrators, staff and poll workers nationwide have reached levels never seen before, fueled largely by baseless claims spread by Donald Trump and his supporters that the 2020 election was stolen.
It’s no less an issue in Texas, where Gillespie County Elections Administrator Anissa Herrera and her two deputies resigned their jobs early this month, citing threats from the public. Trump won 79 percent of the vote in Gillespie County in 2020. The county has a little over 20,000 registered voters.
Elections officials in Cameron and Hidalgo counties report no such issues against their offices or polling place volunteers in their respective counties, though Cameron County Elections Administrator Remi Garza, immediate past president of the Texas Association of Elections Administrators, said that inappropriate behavior at polling places has become more pronounced since the 2020 election.
“Here in Cameron County we haven’t had any direct threats to anybody that I’m aware of, but we have had incidences at our polling locations where law enforcement had to be involved to help de-escalate the situation,” he said. “It’s not unusual to have irate voters or frustrated voters during an election, but it seems that the escalation of what they were willing to do in a polling place changed significantly since 2020.”
Garza, in a recent interview with NPR, said Texas election workers’ jobs have become more difficult since 2020, and suggested the state’s relatively new modified voter observer law could have something to do with it. The previous version of the last allowed poll watchers to “observe” activities at a polling place. The new language specifies that they’re allowed to “see and hear” as opposed to merely observe, which some poll watchers may feel gives them license to be more intrusive than the law actually allows, Garza said.
Meanwhile, threats against election workers haven’t been limited to Gillespie County, whose county seat is Fredericksburg. Garza said that in response to a request from the U.S. House Oversight Committee, TAEA submitted a letter detailing threats to elections administrators and their staffs spawned by “misinformation and disinformation” that had come to TAEA’s attention.
“After the 2020 election obviously the rhetoric changed rather significantly, and the tone and tenor of threats became more physical and more violent in suggestion,” he said. “It started to have an impact with respect to administrators in their daily functions. Through social media there were very graphic threats made against the Tarrant County administrator. Also in Hood County there was a campaign to challenge the procedures and practices of the administrator there. Ultimately she wound up accepting another job outside the profession because the onslaught was just too much.”
Hilda Salinas, assistant director of the Hidalgo County Elections Department, said it hasn’t been an issue there so far.
“We haven’t experienced anything like that here with Hidalgo County and elections with our poll judges and clerks, as well as our employees here within the department,” she said. “We hope that it continues like that, because we do have very strong support from our commissioners court as well as the elected officials from the community itself.”
Salinas said her department does its best to inform the public anytime a change is made affecting voting and elections, with guidance from the Texas Secretary of State’s office and in adherence to the Texas Election Code. The department strives for transparency, she said, and encouraged anyone with questions about the process to “come straight to us, straight to the source.”
“Give us a call,” Salinas said. “Talk to us. … A lot of the time it could be just a misunderstanding or just not knowing the process or the laws. That’s what we’re here for: communicate, educate, inform.”
Garza cited an example of the evidence-free conspiracy theories some voters embraced during the 2020 election:
“The most significant disinformation campaign was based on initials that were placed on the back of early voting ballots, where people were challenging the presence of my initials, which are required by statute, so that you can essentially tie the specific ballots that come from my office to the polling location,” he said.
“They felt that because there were markings on the back of the ballot, that those ballots would be segregated and ultimately thrown out because they would be targeting one candidate or another.”
Garza said his department’s mission is to ensure elections are conducted with consistency and transparency exactly according to state law, and also encouraged anyone with questions about the process to contact the office directly or go to the website.
“If they can’t find it there we can direct them to the right source,” he said.
The best weapon against misinformation and disinformation (misinformation spread deliberately) is “getting the right information out as quickly as possible,” or better yet, making sure ahead of time that people know where to access correct election information, Garza said. In addition, anyone who meets the requirements can participate in the process directly by working elections and learning about the process from the inside, he said.
“They can work with their parties or they can volunteer on nonpartisan elections,” Garza said. “All they have to do is apply and we will be glad to work with them.”
He expressed gratitude for the support his department receives and also to the individual election workers “on the front lines of our democracy.”
“They’re the ones that qualify the voters,” Garza said. “They’re the ones that distribute the ballots and ultimately secure them to make sure that they’re accurately counted. And so when they’re put in jeopardy it’s in assault on democracy itself. This is the baseline of our system of government. For whatever purposes, to attempt to undermine or erode confidence in that process I think is an assault on America itself.”
