The entire elections staff in a rural Texas county has quit less than three months before November's midterm elections.
s deep in Texas wine country is by now a familiar story in America: He became fed up with the harassment that followed the 2020 election.On the brink of November’s midterm elections, it was not just Hamilton who up and quit this month but also the only other full-time election worker in rural Gillespie County. The sudden emptying of an entire local elections department came less than 70 days before voters start casting ballots.
The resignations have more broadly made the county of roughly 27,000 residents — which overwhelmingly backed former President Donald Trump in 2020 — an extraordinary example of the fallout resulting from threats to election officials. Officials and voting experts worry that a new wave of harassment or worse will return in November, fueled by false claims of widespread fraud.
He declined to discuss the nature of the threats in a phone interview, referring questions to the county attorney, who did not respond to a phone message. Gillespie County Sheriff Buddy Mills said neither his department nor police in Fredericksburg had received information about threats from elections officials.
They are familiar to many election workers in Texas, which has been at the vanguard of a Republican campaign nationwide to tighten election laws in response to Trump's baseless claims that the 2020 election was rigged. Supporters are easy to find in Gillespie County, a popular getaway to booming vineyards and vacation rentals in the scenic Texas Hill Country, which is a short day trip from the state's liberal capital in Austin but separated by a gulf politically.
A survey released in March by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law found that one in three election officials knows someone who has left a job in part because of threats and intimidation, and that one in six had experienced threats personally. It underscores the challenges a new staff will face getting up to speed under a time crunch. For now, Saiidi said the county clerk and tax assessor have been discussed as possible fills-in.
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