Elections administrators under ever greater scrutiny

With the midterm elections less than a month away, elections administrators in Texas have faced a level of harassment and threats experts say has never been experienced before, The Texas Tribune reported on Monday.

In August, the entire staff of a local elections office in Gillespie County (Fredericksburg) resigned, citing “dangerous misinformation” and a lack of resources. That same month, Bexar County elections administrator Jacque Callanen told KSAT, a San Antonio news station, that her department was confronting similar challenges.

A study from the Brennan Center for Justice and the Bipartisan Policy Center, found that 78% of elections administrators believe misinformation and disinformation spread on social media have made their jobs harder, The Texas Tribune stated.

In Texas, about one-third of election administrators have left their jobs in the past two years, they further said. Lavaca County, incidentally, happened to be one of those in that one-third category.

That the levels of distrust from some voters have dominated the political landscape in Texas, a state former President Donald Trump easily won, should be cause for concern, according to David Becker, the founder and executive director of The Center for Election Innovation & Research, a nonprofit focused on ensuring accessible and secure elections for all eligible voters.

When asked the election denialism and skepticism that has grown among some Republicans since 2020, despite evidence that the presidential election indeed was not marred by widespread fraud, Becker answered with the following:

“This is about the outcome being dissatisfying to some, and then looking for some reason to distrust the process,” he said. “Because there’s no other way to explain it other than the fact that the losing presidential candidate got 7 million fewer votes than the winning presidential candidate, which is in fact what did happen.

“Nevertheless, the doubts have persisted, if not grown,” he said. “I think it comes from the fact that there is kind of a warped incentive structure where the losing presidential candidate is getting rich off spreading the lies, so he’s going to keep doing it. The ecosystem of grifters that surround him are also getting rich; they’re lining their pockets with small donations from people who are sincerely disappointed about the outcome of the election.

“As long as that incentive structure continues, I think the lies are going to persist. We now live in a country where, for many, a secure election is defined only as an election in which my candidate has won. That’s ridiculous. We need to change that incentive structure so that people stop exploiting their own supporters to make a buck,” Becker said.