In her ultimate 12 months overseeing Bexar County’s elections, Jacque Callanen used up the final of the paperclips that introduced down her predecessor 22 years earlier.
The memorable 2002 election and its two-page poll — unprecedented on the time — infuriated native officers when paper-clipped ballots hamstrung the counting and delayed outcomes by three days.
It’s the kind of monumental flub Callanen has efficiently averted within the nearly twenty years she’s served as Bexar County’s elections administrator, which can come to a detailed on Jan. 24.
This 12 months Bexar County officers overseeing her place decided new management was wanted to fulfill the wants of a rising county.
In a nod to their considerations, this November Bexar County voters solid 14,000 fewer ballots than in 2020, regardless of a 9.7% improve within the variety of registered voters from the final presidential election.
But, as they watch Callanen go, many political operatives and elected officers are additionally crammed with anxiousness about discovering an appropriate alternative.
Bexar County employed a recruiter on Friday to start a nationwide seek for an elections administrator who can stand up to erratic coverage adjustments, political concentrating on of Texas’ main city facilities and elevated harassment that’s despatched many within the business working for the exits.
All through a number of recent election integrity efforts in Texas, Callanen’s shut adherence to the foundations has saved her out of the hearth of conservatives — and even received her reward from a neighborhood Republican Get together chair who served on the county’s poll board.
But lengthy strains to vote and lower-than-expected turnout within the Nov. 5 election have as soon as once more raised questions on whether or not the elections division is assembly its accountability to offer entry and consciousness to a variety of voters.
Callanen, for her half, says she’s going out on a excessive. Voter participation was down statewide this November, and her ultimate election featured only a few complaints, both from the voting rights advocates who sued her previously or the conservative elections judges the state deputized to supervise her work.
“I’d name it profitable,” Callanen mentioned in an interview at her workplace. “Those that needed to vote voted.”
An more and more litigious panorama
Regardless of her glowing status amongst fellow elections officers, Callanen hasn’t escaped partisans’ ire in her capability as elections chief.
Whereas officers in different counties have sought to develop voting entry with efforts like rising the variety of polling places and permitting drive-thru voting, Callenen has resisted calls from county leaders who need her to pursue related concepts, and she or he’s twice been sued for working too few voting places, forcing last-minute additions to adjust to judges’ orders in 2020 and 2022.
A full cardboard field by her desk holds a stack of lawsuits naming her personally. New to the gathering this election cycle is a lawsuit from Texas Legal professional Basic Ken Paxton, who sued the county for hiring a voter registration vendor — one thing Callanen urged county commissioners to not do.
Nonetheless Callanen’s followers — and they’re legion — say she’s picked her battles appropriately and stayed out of the state’s crosshairs. Republican lawmakers eradicated Harris County’s elections administrator place after the county’s efforts so as to add polling websites resulted in a poll paper scarcity that Callanen refers to as “the Harris nightmare.”
By comparability, Callanen has targeted her vitality on adapting to the state’s altering guidelines, even once they’ve made her job tougher. Since she was first employed by the workplace in 1996, Texas moved to digital voting in 2003 — solely to return to paper ballots in 2020.
Maybe essentially the most sweeping adjustments got here in 2021, when a Texas election legislation cracked down on mail-in voting — and criminalized actions of elections directors who fall out of line.
Callanen mentioned information of huge adjustments usually elicits a number of alternative phrases from her, shouted from her workplace to a sea of cubicles round her. However she doesn’t essentially disagree with the state’s perspective.
She’s not keen on the legislation’s adjustments curbing a partner or dad or mum’s capacity to request a mail poll on behalf of a member of the family, which she mentioned damage folks with disabilities specifically.
Irrespective of how heartbreaking their state of affairs, Callanen mentioned, breaking these guidelines may put her or her workers members in critical authorized bother.
She additionally lamented the legislation’s requirement that voters should keep in mind to make use of the identical identification quantity — both Social Safety or driver’s license quantity — on each the mail poll software and the poll.
“We don’t like SB1,” she concluded of the 2021 voting legislation. “I perceive the necessity for it. I perceive the background behind it. However what the Legislature didn’t notice is, who votes the mail ballots essentially the most? Seniors.”
In different methods, nonetheless, she mentioned a few of the eccentricities of Texas’ voting procedures have helped strengthen belief in elections.
For instance, Texas requires that every mail poll signature be verified by a pair of officers from each events — or thrown out if it could possibly’t be matched — slowing the method tremendously so as to add a layer of belief amongst partisans.
“I personally assume the way in which the mechanism works is marvelous,” mentioned Callanen, who has garnered nice respect from the get together officers overseeing her work.
A tricky job in a rising county
Sitting behind her desk the Thursday after the election, Callanen is exhausted. She has a cough, as do a number of different members of her 24-person workers. She mentioned that’s typical, because the adrenaline of the election begins to empty from their our bodies after months, then weeks, then days of round the clock work.
Trade leaders level to these patterns as problematic for his or her area, the place newcomers aren’t as desperate to commerce work-life stability for the job’s patriotic facets.
At 79, Callanen walks slowly; a sheriff’s deputy held her gently by the arm on Election Day as she walked forwards and backwards from the elections workplace to the lodge parking zone throughout the road the place native media had been posted up all day.
She speaks quietly and with a slight tremor, however there’s vigor in her voice when she talks in regards to the sacred civil proper of voting, which she has devoted her profession to defending.
After Bexar County’s elections administrator was dismissed in 2002, Callanen, who had been a third-grade instructor, was ultimately promoted to take over.
“As I used to be studying I’d step into each single place within the workplace,” Callanen defined of her course of. “I wanted to do it to handle it; that was my philosophy.”
For greater than twenty years, a reminder of the delayed 2002 election has been an enormous bucket of paperclips, which her predecessor bought from each vendor he may discover to lock the two-page ballots collectively.
Whereas well-intentioned, Callanen mentioned, he mistook the period of time that additional step would add when counting tons of of 1000’s of ballots.
In a county that’s grown by greater than 100,000 registered voters because the final presidential election, a few of Callanen’s critics say she too has at occasions did not account for the size of the division’s selections.
Most notably, she’s labored to take care of voting places in the identical locations from 12 months to 12 months, even when these places may now not accommodate extra voting machines or parking ample sufficient to maneuver voters by means of shortly.
“I consider in my coronary heart that the individuals who [wait in long lines do so] as a result of they belief that location,” mentioned Callanen, who famous that her workplace tried to redirect voters to close by places with shorter wait occasions on this previous election.
“Was I sorry there was strains? Completely. Was I thrilled that there have been strains? You higher consider it,” she mentioned. “I imply, that’s what we do. We would like folks to return out. So it’s an actual catch-22. Sure, I’m held accountable as a result of there’s strains. I get it.”
Different giant counties have additionally began outsourcing different elements of the job, like printing mail ballots. However Callanen, who mentioned she has a tough time trusting outdoors distributors, retains as a lot of the method in-house as attainable.
“I’d somewhat — and I do — preserve every thing on this constructing,” she mentioned.
Discovering a alternative
Most elections officers agree there’s a persona kind that dominates their business, and Callanen says she’s no exception, referring to herself as each “Kind A” and having a “logical thoughts.”
“I can sit again and put the puzzle collectively,” Callanen mentioned. “I could not be capable of construct every bit of the puzzle, however I do know the place it matches. That comes with expertise, it comes with belief, it comes with information, comes with help.”
To folks whose jobs depend on easily run elections, shedding that’s terrifying.
At a politics panel earlier than the election, San Antonio political consultants Laura Barberena, a Democrat, and Kelton Morgan, a Republican, praised Callanen’s work, whereas brazenly worrying about the way forward for Bexar County elections.
San Antonio is six months away from electing a brand new mayor — on an election day that can overlap with Fiesta Flambeau for the primary time in both of their reminiscences.
“The truth that we don’t have a brand new elections administrator — or at the least the seek for it even began — we should always have carried out this two years in the past,” Barberena mentioned on the time.
Callanen mentioned she believes her second in command, Chief Deputy Elections Administrator James Huerta, may step in if a brand new candidate hasn’t been put in in time for the municipal election. Callanen, Huerta and their groups will start preparations for the Could municipal election beginning subsequent month.
Callanen selected Jan. 24 as her ultimate day on the job so she may participate in another ritual that her workplace has lengthy cherished: Regrouping after a grueling presidential election to observe the inauguration collectively over brunch.
“They go away their politics on the door. … And it’s only a second of pleasure and celebration,” Callanen mentioned. “It’s a most enjoyable, proud, loving second that we do, and I didn’t wish to miss that.”
A lot of her workers have been there so long as she has, and she or he mentioned she’ll miss their family-like camaraderie.
“One of the proud moments I’ll have is the sensation of affection and help that we’ve on this workplace, and we’ve with our elections officers,” Callanen mentioned.
Tammy Patrick, chief government officer for applications of The Election Middle, a commerce group representing elections professionals, mentioned that within the face of expertise pipeline points, many elections directors at the moment are coming from different industries.
However in Texas, she added, there’s an added problem, due to the significance of understanding the state’s election legal guidelines.
“Election officers who’re fascinated about discovering a brand new workplace to manipulate or a brand new neighborhood to serve will assume lengthy and onerous about how election officers have been handled in that jurisdiction,” she mentioned. “I believe that can weigh closely on anybody considering shifting to a brand new neighborhood to serve.”
Even when Bexar County can discover that, Patrick mentioned, changing Callanen continues to be a tricky act.
“Jacque is a nationwide treasure,” she mentioned.
