Unusual questions were presented to Cameron County Elections Administrator Remi Garza during last week’s county commissioners court meeting.
Garza was asked if he or his employees had been stalked or threatened, and he said they had not.
The questions were asked by Cameron County Precinct 3 Commissioner David Garza following last week’s resignation of employees at the Gillespie County elections office who said they had been threatened and stalked.
“They were being stalked, they were being harassed, they were being verbally abused, and they just got fed up and quit,” Commissioner David Garza said.
Former Gillespie County Elections Administrator Anissa Herrera told the Fredericksburg Standard-Radio Post last week that after the 2020 election she was threatened, stalked, and called out on social media.
Remi Garza said unfortunately at some of his department’s public events individuals working at the tables handing out information “have had some confrontations with individuals and at some of our polling locations during early voting we have had some residents that were overly aggressive at the place and actually law enforcement had to be called in to calm the situation down.”
Commissioner David Garza said he brought the issue up to remind the public that the “elections process is a sacred area that needs to be respected by all.”
The commissioner said although he doesn’t always agree with the requests that Remi Garza asks for during Commissioners Court meetings, he told Garza, “But I certainly respect the work that you and your department does in putting up with what you have to, because I know it is tough at times. I think it’s important that the court keep in mind what’s occurring in the world today and what hopefully we won’t have escalated in Cameron County in this next election cycle.”
Remi Garza said he believes the reason Cameron County hasn’t experienced bad escalation incidents is due to the dedicated members from the community who volunteer to help with the elections. “The dedication of these presiding judges, and alternate judges and clerks is something I admire, and I think it’s attributed to our county of the individuals that comprise the people who volunteer for the elections as well as the individuals that work in the elections office.”
Cameron County Judge Eddie Trevino Jr. said the county’s elections department run by Remi Garza, the staff, and parttime workers would not work without them. “Our democracy would not work without each and every one of them here in Cameron County and throughout the entire country. We find ourselves in a state right now in our country where if an election doesn’t go the way we might like whether it be for an individual or on a particular issue, it seems to think that either physical threats or violence or harassment is a way to address that and that is not how a democracy works.”
“We have to be able to agree to disagree respectfully and understand that our system has worked for these 246 years because of our ability to trust in our elections,” Trevino said.
“We run our elections fairly, correctly and impartially,” here in Cameron County, Trevino said. The county has close to 226,000 registered voters.
What has occurred in Cameron and Gillespie counties is also occurring all over the United States and the harassments started during the 2020 elections, according to an Aug. 11, 2022, report by the U.S. House of Representatives titled “Exhausting and Dangerous”: The Dire Problem of Election Misinformation and Disinformation.
Prior to the 2020 election officials were worried about foreign actors using false information to influence voters, including about providing false information about candidates and when and where to vote, the report states. “The Committee’s investigations make clear that the greatest current threat to democratic legitimacy now comes from lies by domestic actors who seek to convince Americans that their election systems are fraudulent, corrupt, or insecure.”
According to the report, misinformation led to violent death threats to local elections officials. In one case in Texas, “personal attacks on national media outlets” led to alarming threats against an election administrator, including a social media call to “hang him when convicted for fraud and let his lifeless body hang in public until maggots drip out of his mouth” and messages threatening his children, stating, “I think we should end your bloodline.”
After the 2020 presidential election, some elected officials leveraged voters’ distrust to question the election results by espousing the “Big Lie” — the false claim that former President Donald Trump was the true winner of the 2020 election, the report stated. “These elected officials carried a dangerous message: that election administrators were to blame for the stolen election.”
Proponents of the Big Lies spread their conspiracy theory by filing over 60 failed lawsuits challenging election results and publicly threatening election administrators, the report states.
The 21-page report concluded, “The risk of subversion of future elections remains high. Local election officials are on the frontlines of this crisis. Now more than ever, they need the resources and support that only the federal government can provide. A federal whole-of-government response to this growing crisis is an urgent necessity.”
