Following a string of errors in Starr County during the March primary election, the county’s elections department underwent a change in leadership this week with the appointment of a new elections administrator and the resignation of the former administrator who rejected the demotion.
On Monday, the Starr County commissioners court agreed to appoint Human Resources Director Armandina Martinez as the new elections administrator, essentially demoting Elections Administrator John L. Rodriguez within the department.
The decision was done at the recommendation of the Starr County elections committee which met last week to discuss the issue.
“We met last week and it was pretty much decided by the committee that they wanted a change of direction for the elections office and their recommendation was to name Armandina, who is also our human resources director, to name her to oversee elections,” said Starr County Judge Eloy Vera, who sits on the elections committee along with the Democratic Party chair, the Republican Party chair, the county clerk, and the county tax collector.
“So she would oversee both offices,” Vera continued. “That would save the county some money and she’s certainly very capable. She used to work at elections before so the committee decided to name her.”
The desire to move the department in a new direction, Vera said, was just a feeling of wanting to do so by the committee.
“I guess they got a lot of complaints, I really don’t know what it was, but they asked for a meeting to be called,” Vera said. “I called the meeting because I’m the chair and then it was discussed and they said they wanted a change of direction.”
RESIGNATION
Vera clarified that Martinez’s appointment did not mean Rodriguez had been terminated and assured he would remain at the department as an assistant.
The following day, Rodriguez submitted a letter of resignation.
“They named another election administrator knowing that I’m still there. You tell me, how are you going to feel?” Rodriguez asked when reached by phone Friday. “I see it like they were just pushing me away.”
Rodriguez began working in the department in September 2003 and took over the job of elections administrator in 2017 after the death of former Elections Administrator Rafael Montalvo.
And while he loved his job of nearly 19 years, Rodriguez said there were a lot of things that were changing and so, after talking it over with his wife, he made the final decision to leave.
As to the allegations of mishandling the primary election, Rodriguez acknowledged there were some issues, but said that was no different from previous years.
“There’s no such thing as a perfect election,” he said. “Issues did happen, but those issues were resolved and you can talk to both parties about that.”
He said the county had experienced bigger problems during elections in the past and no one had been removed from their position for it.
“I’m confident that the issues that happened were resolved and everything was reported to the state, if something did happen, and I’m comfortable with that,” he said.
CRITICISMS
One party chair, however, said the errors that occurred this year were unlike any issues the county had dealt with before.
Hilda Gonzalez Garza, the Democratic Party chair, said the county has always had technical issues with the machines, but the errors this year were administrative.
Among them was that the final numbers on election night were misreported to the Texas Secretary of State’s office, which complicated attempts to track the results of the race for Texas’ 28th congressional district, one of the most closely watched races nationwide.
The race, which is headed to a runoff election on May 24, pits U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar against progressive challenger Jessica Cisneros.
“The reason was because of the discrepancies that we had with regards to the numbers that were submitted to the secretary of state, as far as the result, and then those that were forwarded to the Democratic Party and to myself, the official results,” Gonzalez Garza said, referring to why the elections committee chose to replace Rodriguez.
She added some of the party’s poll workers said delays prevented some polling sites from opening on time and some election equipment was missing.
“My understanding was that even the information that they needed to provide, meaning the chips that needs to be inserted into the machine that has the ballot, had not been provided to them when they were picking up their boxes for election day and that should have been in the box for election day,” Gonzalez Garza said.
ABSENTEE BALLOTS
There were problems with absentee ballots, or mail-in ballots, as well.
The county elections department mailed out outdated carrier envelopes that did not prompt voters to provide identification as required under Texas’ new voting law, Senate Bill 1.
The law requires voters to provide their driver’s license number, election identification certificate, or personal ID card issued by the Texas Department of Public Safety, or the last four digits of their social security number.
Rodriguez said his department notified voters of the error and were given the option of coming to the county offices to fill in the ID requirement on an updated carrier envelope or write it on the old envelope.
Some voters did take the opportunity to correct their envelope, though Rodriguez said he could not recall how many did so and he said there were many who chose not to because they did not want to write down their personnel information.
“That was pretty much the elderly that … they’re afraid about their identity issues,” Rodriguez said. “We can’t tell them otherwise.”
He added there were voters who received the correct carrier envelopes and still refused to input their ID information.
“You can clearly see the envelope … with no information, period, and they just rejected those ballots,” he said. “And yes, if they didn’t have any kind of information that the envelope requested … they were just going to reject them and that’s what happened.”
Rodriguez said he doesn’t know how many ballots were rejected because of the error, but Gonzalez Garza estimated that, overall, between 150 and 200 absentee ballots were rejected in the Democratic primary out of the approximately 300 that were cast.
On the Republican side, about 20 absentee ballots were rejected out the approximately 82 that were cast.
Starr County Republican Party Chair Claudia Alcazar was more generous in her assessment of Rodriguez’s handling of the primary election.
“Mistakes happen and they could have been detrimental to our results, but they weren’t,” Alcazar said. “I think that (they were) small mistakes.”
She said the elections committee’s decision to appoint a new administrator was due to the growth of the county and the stronger Republican presence there.
“I think that someone that possibly could take over has more experience with that,” Alcazar said. “This really comes as a result of the people that worked the election.”
PRIMARY RUNOFF
Since there will be fewer contested races, the Primary runoff in Starr County is set to be a smaller operation. The county will be consolidating many of the voting precincts so that there will only be four polling locations, one in each county commissioner’s jurisdiction.
With the appointment of a new administrator and Rodriguez’s resignation, Gonzalez Garza said she would be reaching out to her to, among other things, obtain a sample ballot for the runoff election, which she said she had not received from Rodriguez.
But she would also be willing to assist Martinez prepare for the runoff election, which is scheduled for early voting in just a few weeks.
“Hopefully she’ll come up to speed, and obviously we’ll try to help her as best as we can,” she said.
