Brazos County election officers really feel the pressure of unrelenting scrutiny from right-wing skeptics

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BRYAN — At election time, Trudy Hancock spends a number of time in her automobile, delivering gear to polling websites scattered round Brazos County and visiting ballot staff who want her assist in the sphere.

She retains the automobile radio on, and all the time tuned to Christian music.

Recovering from a tiring Election Day final week, the longtime county election administrator recalled listening to one tune that resonated together with her. It’s referred to as “The Truth,” and opens with the lyrics:

What number of instances are you able to hear the identical lie

Earlier than you begin to imagine it?

At her desk that morning, she recited a model of these lyrics as greatest as she may bear in mind them, softly, haltingly.

“But I know the truth,” she added, as she tried to carry again tears. “It gets hard.”

There are explanation why the tune hit house. After many years of working in elections, and years of listening to individuals lie about them, Hancock and her employees members are beginning to typically doubt themselves. Like election officers across the nation, they’ve repeatedly tried to reassure a small group of right-wing skeptics that the county’s elections are protected and safe. They’ve tried to reply their questions, accommodated their calls for, educated them in regards to the regulation, and supplied them alternatives to see firsthand how the method works.

“They won’t accept our answers, because it’s not the answers that they want,” Hancock, 60, stated. “There’s just no end to it.”

Election Day in Brazos — a Republican stronghold round 100 miles northwest of Houston, and residential to Texas A&M College — went fairly easily this time. Minor technical points have been resolved early on. Few areas had lengthy wait instances.

Hancock is aware of the reality. However she additionally is aware of that it gained’t be sufficient to quiet the skeptics, who have been questioning election processes proper as much as the beginning of early voting this 12 months, and haven’t stopped.

Now that the 2024 election is over, Hancock is about to resolve whether or not she will be able to hold doing the job.

The requests hold coming

Since January, Hancock and her employees have hosted no less than three public conferences the place they’ve gone over, intimately, how the voting gear works, and each single step of the election course of. They’ve defined to the group of involved residents that voter roll upkeep is completed every day by employees members whose sole job is to verify such lists are correct.

Following the March main election, Hancock invited a few of the residents who’ve been coming to Commissioners Courtroom to participate within the state-mandated partial hand depend, which is completed by each county after every election to examine the accuracy of the voting gear. The Secretary of State’s workplace selects the races to be hand-counted.

In an effort to extend transparency, Hancock obtained state permission to hand-count further races. One of many critics of her workplace, resident Catherine Viens, participated within the depend, which took a couple of days to finish and confirmed no discrepancies.

However the requests stored coming. They requested Hancock to protect towards double voting — although there’s no proof of that occuring at massive scale — by buying particular poll paper that’s preprinted with sequential serial numbers, beginning with 1.

The paper value taxpayers $14,000 and, in keeping with Hancock, doesn’t actually enhance safety. It creates waste, as a result of leftover ballots can’t be reused within the subsequent election. On prime of that, the county staff should spend extra and time assets redacting the printed numbers to guard voters’ poll secrecy.

Hancock agreed to it anyway for the presidential election. But it surely didn’t appear to deliver anybody peace of thoughts.

Throughout a state-mandated logic and accuracy take a look at of the digital gear, which is open to the general public, the group repeatedly requested, “Are the machines connected to the internet?” And every time the reply was the identical, “no,” stated Thomas Cavaness, the Brazos County Democratic Celebration chair, who participated within the take a look at.

The testing ought to have taken 45 minutes to an hour, Cavaness stated, “but instead it took us three hours to finish, because they kept asking questions.”

False claims fly at an October assembly

The questions have been pouring in for no less than a 12 months now, from a number of Republicans in Brazos who converse out recurrently at Commissioners Courtroom conferences. They’ve urged elected officers to take steps that embrace eliminating using digital voting gear like ballot-marking machines and digital ballot books. They’ve falsely claimed the gear is linked to the web and susceptible to hacking.

At an October assembly, days earlier than the beginning of early voting, 4 individuals spoke, asking commissioners once more to endorse their efforts. Brazos resident Cynthia Wiley expressed her frustration with what she stated was a scarcity of motion.

“You’re our only recourse to express our concerns,” Wiley instructed the commissioners, citing voter registrations she’s unsuccessfully challenged. “And you guys have direct authority over the election administrator.”

Hancock has stated her workplace is following the legally mandated procedures. Federal regulation prevents election officers from systematically eradicating individuals from the voter rolls 90 days forward of a federal election. As well as, state regulation requires election officers to inform voters and provides them an opportunity to reply and proper any errors earlier than they are often faraway from the rolls, however Wiley stated she needed the elected officers to instruct Hancock to analyze the registrations of the voters she had challenged instantly.

On the similar assembly, Viens asserted that the county had no emergency plan in case the facility went out. Hancock stated that’s false: The county has for years been ready to deal with energy outages, violence, or pure disasters on Election Day, and Hancock had mills and different supplies able to go in case one thing went improper. Viens has requested a replica of the plan.

One other resident who steadily speaks on the conferences is Walter Daughterity, a retired laptop science professor at Texas A&M. Daughterity usually seems on the video platform of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, well-known as a promoter of election conspiracy theories, and at different venues pushing for hand counting of ballots. Daughterity has asserted that Brazos’ voting machines are linked to the web and never licensed by federal officers. County and state officers have stated these assertions usually are not true.

On the October assembly, he listed six pressing priorities for the Commissioners Courtroom. He didn’t reply to Votebeat’s request for remark.

Mark Holtzapple, a chemical engineering professor at Texas A&M, has echoed Daughterity’s claims. At that assembly, he claimed that “ballot boxes are insecure,” as a result of “the hinge on the locked box is on the outside, and all you have to do is unscrew one bolt” to get across the lock and safety seal on it.

In an e-mail to Votebeat, Holtzapple stated he and the opposite residents are “not accusing anyone of anything. Rather, we are simply concerned citizens who want to improve election security, an essential condition for a properly functioning republic.”

The professors’ advocacy has spurred pushback from a few of their colleagues on the college. Hank Walker, a pc science and engineering professor, wrote an e-mail to Hancock in August to thank her and the employees for “performing so professionally with people who question your integrity.”

“I have known Walter and Mark for 30 years,” he stated in an e-mail to Votebeat. “They have good intentions, but they are wrong.”

Days after the general public assembly the place the activists spoke, Brazos County Choose Duane Peters requested Hancock to publicly reply. However when Hancock introduced on the following Commissioners Courtroom assembly, not one of the residents who had complained have been there.

The 4 residents later requested a separate in-person assembly with Peters and Hancock. She repeated what she had defined earlier. Holtzapple instructed Votebeat that the hourlong assembly “was not sufficient time to fully resolve the issues and generate an action plan.”

The residents compiled a 50-page doc that lays out the problems they introduced up on the assembly and the way the county responded. They count on one other assembly.

Viens stated in a textual content message to Votebeat that her confidence within the course of “will not be restored until the county complies with the Texas Election Code.” She particularly needs to see the county remove countywide voting, and use solely hand-marked paper ballots.

Wiley, who together with Viens labored as a polling place supervisor throughout elections this 12 months, together with throughout the presidential election final week, stated she doesn’t belief the digital voting gear. “Once you click or insert your choices on paper into the machinery, who or what is really casting our votes?” she wrote in an e-mail to Votebeat. She additionally echoed Viens’ request to assist restore her confidence within the election course of.

Holtzapple acknowledged that Hancock and her employees have made efforts to handle the considerations he and others have raised, however stated he nonetheless needs a extra intensive dialogue, extra substantive responses to the questions he’s elevating about election safety, and extra responsiveness on to the individuals who elevate considerations.

For instance, when a resident challenges a voter registration, “there should be a closing of the loop, that there should be respect shown from the government to the citizens for taking that time to identify people who possibly should be removed from the voter rolls.”

Peters, the county choose, described a few of the residents’ actions and feedback as a “constant barrage… I catch it, too,” he stated. “And they expect me to change the system and go to something that I think is way less secure than the system we’ve got.”

“So I can understand why Trudy and her staff would be stressed to the limit,” Peters added. “It hasn’t impacted their work ethic, but I know it gets discouraging.”

A demanding Election Day: “They don’t understand”

Hancock was born and raised in neighboring Robertson County, and nonetheless lives there together with her husband. Her first expertise in elections was as a ballot employee in her group again within the late Eighties, she stated.

She spends her free time scrapbooking and screenprinting T-shirts. She usually makes these for her employees, that includes messages similar to “election squad,” and likewise makes them for family and friends at their request.

“It’s a fun outlet for me,” Hancock stated.

She’s most happy with her two teenage grandchildren. On the evening earlier than Election Day, she was exhausted, however agreed to have them over for dinner. She made them pumpkin bread and introduced some to the workplace the subsequent day.

Within the early morning hours of Election Day, Hancock had already answered dozens of cellphone calls from election staff at polling locations who wanted her assist. In the event that they have been brief on election provides, she hopped in her small purple SUV to ship them herself, toting further yellow site visitors cones and curbside voting indicators. Technical points with the gear? She knew whom to name. There was no drawback Hancock and her employees didn’t resolve shortly.

Krystal Ocon and others in Hancock’s workplace fanned out throughout the county, and fielded questions from election staff in a textual content thread that stored her cellphone dinging all through the day.

Ocon, 39, is the Brazos County elections coordinator, and unofficially Hancock’s second in command. She was born and raised in Brazos. For the previous 20 years, she’s labored on each side of elections within the county. She is aware of the method completely.

All through the day, Hancock relied on Ocon to offer voters and election staff course, and to assist when wanted, similar to when a line of faculty college students started to kind exterior of the polling location on the elections division. A lot of them hadn’t up to date their voter registration and must forged a provisional poll, which takes extra time. There was solely a few hours left earlier than polls have been set to shut.

“Look at that line!” Ocon stated, earlier than swinging into motion.

She shortly gave the ready college students instructions: the place to face, what sort of ID they wanted to have prepared, the types they could have to fill out in the event that they weren’t registered within the county. She instructed them what their choices have been and what would occur subsequent.

Collectively, the Brazos County elections division employees has greater than 60 years of expertise. So Ocon is annoyed by the fixed requests and skepticism from the activists. She worries that it may discourage the employees and weaken the division.

“They don’t understand how much time and care it takes to do this job,” Ocon stated.

She factors out that she’s needed to miss Halloween occasions together with her daughter a number of instances over time with a view to handle early voting and meet state-mandated election deadlines.

“Do they honestly think that I am going to take time away from my family to hack the machines, change votes, and go to jail?” she stated. “Heck no. So yeah, I take all of this very personally.”

Ballot watchers act “like detectives”

The strain between the small group of Republican activists and the county elections division penetrated selections over learn how to greatest handle polling place staffing throughout this 12 months’s elections.

Hancock stated the Republican Celebration in Brazos, now led by Ross Ford, refused to collaborate together with her employees to assign work websites for election judges, who supervise polling areas.

Previously, Hancock and her employees have been in a position to assign staff appointed by the social gathering to areas the place they’d be a great match. “For example, a location that gets a lot of voters needs an experienced team, and so we’d assign workers based on that,” Hancock stated.

This 12 months, the social gathering made these placement selections by itself, which by regulation, it’s entitled to do. In some circumstances, it assigned inexperienced staff to areas staffed solely by different inexperienced staff, which led to some delays on Election Day. At one location, election judges have been not sure learn how to course of voters with out-of-state IDs or learn how to course of provisional ballots.

And Republican ballot staff stated they have been struggling to cope with the social gathering’s personal ballot watchers.

“These poll watchers feel more like detectives than observers,” stated Invoice Edison, a Republican election choose in Brazos who has been a ballot employee for greater than a decade.

“​​Nearly all the poll watchers, except for one I had on Election Day, were from the Republican Party. And they’re trolling Republican judges, in a town basically where they own the county politically,” he stated. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

Ford, the social gathering chief, stated the social gathering has been sad with Hancock’s employees’s earlier placement of staff at polling websites. “I know she’s very dedicated, but we feel like we need to assert ourselves and make sure that we’re doing things right,” Ford stated.

The activists say they’re engaged on behalf of voters who lack confidence within the course of. Most voters Votebeat spoke with on Election Day didn’t categorical such doubts.

On the Brazos Middle, one of many busiest polling areas within the county, voters forged their ballots inside minutes. Voters strolling out and again to their automobiles stated that they had confidence within the election course of. They have been unaware of any points between conservative activists and the elections division, they stated.

“Things are working the way they’re supposed to,” stated Brazos voter John Borden.

“The process was smooth and fast. The workers are friendly,” stated Omero Lara.

Amanda Cross, who stated she hasn’t all the time had confidence within the consequence of previous elections, stated she trusts how the method is dealt with regionally. When requested if she’d heard of any issues with the elections workplace or anybody questioning the reliability of the voting gear, she stated “never.”

It was Donald Trump who helped gas a motion of election suspicion after his loss within the 2020 presidential election. Hancock doubts his 2024 victory will gradual that motion down. Simply the day after the election, Hancock was listening to extra questions from Daughterity.

“This is the new normal, and that scares me,” Hancock instructed Votebeat that day. “The distrust in our process and our people. The distrust in everything.”

When requested how she deliberate to maneuver ahead, she stated, “by retiring.”

The timeline for that can rely upon the outcomes of a stress take a look at she had scheduled for this month, after the election.

“No matter how much I love this job, you’ve got to decide whether it’s worth risking your mental and physical health,” she stated. “And that’s where I am.”

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting entry for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org