Behold the poll watcher: A rootin', tootin' odyssey in voting, vigilance & vitriol

In 1944, at the height of sustained Allied efforts driving back fascist forces once intent on conquering the world, the U.S. government produced a short film, “Tuesday in November,” focused on voting as the bedrock of American democracy. It began with polling-place officials of different political persuasions gathering early one morning in a vacant school classroom on a peaceful California home front – a campus principal, a streetcar employee and a housewife: “They’ve all known one another for years,” the narrator tells us. “First they remove the last traces of their campaign activities – their party buttons. Then they take the oath. This makes them responsible for seeing that the voting here today takes place according to the laws of the land. And now the polls are open.” First voter: the town milkman, pausing briefly amidst his neighborhood rounds.

This homespun scene, unfolding to the strains of composer Virgil Thomson’s best Americana, is inspiring in that wonderfully naïve and idealistic way Americans like to see themselves. Released in 1945 by the Office of War Information, the 17-minute film was screened overseas, primarily in towns and cities recently liberated by the Allies, as an example of democracy in action, complete with respect for founding American principles, tradition and one another. Yet for too much of our history, this scene has been illusionary; in 1944 alone, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled political parties in Texas (in short, the Texas Democratic Party; Republicans were practically extinct in Texas) could not decide on their own who could vote in their state primaries and who couldn’t – a ruling that sought to end the state’s repeated efforts to keep minority voters out of the polling place. State and federal laws, for good or ill, have made the polling place an increasingly complicated venue. And now legislators of the dominating party in Texas – this time the Republicans – are about to aggravate matters in ways arguably targeting that proverbial principal, streetcar employee and housewife by empowering a figure not seen in the 1944 film but certainly part of the American electoral scene in one form or another since our nation’s early days. Behold the poll watcher.

Texas Senate Bill 7, which supporters describe as an omnibus “election integrity” bill and critics more accurately label a “monster voter restriction bill,” will represent many different rights or restrictions to many different people if passed in present form and signed into law. Chief among them: empowerment of partisan poll watchers, expanding their right to be “near enough to see and hear” election goings-on and stiffening penalties for election officials who dare restrain poll-watcher activities in election venues.

Key problem: Poll watchers in Texas may lack the rigorous training required of polling-place workers regarding election law and polling-place protocols – and, worse still, the bill sets no penalties for poll watchers who overstep their authority and disrupt voting. And such disruptions are a strong possibility. Despite East Texas Republican Sen. Bryan Hughes’ insistence that poll watchers are the “eyes and ears of the public,” the truth is they’re first and foremost the partisan eyes and ears of political candidates and party officials. And given the depths to which politicians and their acolytes often sink, clashes can and will result – and, in fact, already have under present state law, including here in McLennan County.

Don’t misunderstand. Some poll watchers I know take great pride in not only the discipline they demonstrate in heeding state laws governing polling-place activities but the citizenship they exemplify in objectively overseeing elections in McLennan County. Yet even they will acknowledge the existence of those poll watchers who let personal passions for particular candidates or animus for the opposition foul the very democratic nest of our republic. And the prospect of poll watchers being permitted to record suspicious activities – primarily inappropriate or illegal assistance to voters – as provided in legislation now under consideration worries some lawmakers, election workers and voting rights champions, given the supposed sanctity of the polling place. Some fear cell-phone videos could be downloaded on social-media platforms such as YouTube, embarrassing innocent voters. As amended (and with full approval of Sen. Hughes, the bill’s author), SB 7 would outlaw such downloading – a reassuring step if it survives the rest of the rough-and-tumble legislative process. As Senate Bill 7 stands now, a poll-watcher video could only be shared with the Texas Secretary of State’s Office if a polling-place violation is claimed.

Root of the problem

“This could get lost in the discussion, but at the risk of stating the obvious, poll watchers represent multiple political parties,” Hughes stressed of provisions invigorating poll watchers in SB 7, co-authored by our own Republican state Sen. Brian Birdwell. “There are poll watchers from the Democratic Party, there are poll watchers from the Republican Party. These poll watchers are the stand-ins for the public. They’re there to make sure the rules are followed, and it’s important they be able to do their jobs.”

The biggest problem in all this comes from the hostility that politicians themselves whip up among citizenry, including those who might subsequently sign up to be poll watchers with an axe to wield. For instance, during the tumultuous 2020 general election, our own Sen. Birdwell got up at a church in nearby Bellmead and questioned love of country by Americans allied with the Democratic presidential ticket. Yet, as co-author of Senate Bill 7, he would have us believe those Republicans who took him seriously in church and then sign up as poll watchers won’t enter the polling place with venomous biases and intent. (For the record, at this same Oct. 25 Faith & Freedom Coalition prayer and political rally at Church of the Open Door, Sen. Hughes spent his turn at the lectern preaching an old-time sermon in miniature about the importance of obtaining citizenship in heaven “because our good works are not enough.”) Factor in President Trump’s groundless and odious allegations of malfeasance by rank-and-file election officials, despite the fact his own attorney general and his own Department of Justice investigators and prosecutors found no significant evidence of such malfeasance, and you have a potent prescription for trouble when at least some partisan poll watchers enter the scene so neatly and so properly portrayed in 1944.

Similar provisions empowering poll watchers can be found in other legislation percolating in the Texas Legislature, including House Bill 6, a similar omnibus voting bill co-authored by our own Republican state Rep. Charles “Doc” Anderson. HB 6 declares that the poll watcher is instrumental in ensuring the “purity of the ballot box” and that an election official commits a Class B misdemeanor if “the officer intentionally or knowingly refuses to accept a watcher for service.” (One skeptical legislator wondered aloud how one might refuse a poll watcher for service any other way but “intentionally or knowingly.”)

Proposals to further empower and shield poll watchers raise their involvement to the very top of concerns in state election legislation that would also ban the drive-through voting and expanded early voting hours that minority voters in particular enjoyed in congested, pandemic-hobbled Harris County in the 2020 general election. Notwithstanding the fact these county-ordered measures broadening voting seem like great ideas in any proud, self-respecting democracy, they’re admittedly not provided for by state law. And now state law will specifically prohibit them. There’s also a highly questionable degree of meddlesome micromanaging regarding local distribution and placement of voting machines proposed that could mean longer lines for some voters and needless county expense. On the other hand, a toxic provision requiring that disabled citizens furnish documentation proving they’re truly disabled – which critics correctly cited as a de facto poll tax – was removed from Senate Bill 7 before its passage in the upper chamber, though even this could reappear before the Legislature as a whole is finished. Advocates for disabled Texas voters must remain vigilant.

One can understand why a poll watcher might become frustrated under ordinary balloting conditions. State law allows poll watchers to observe almost every aspect of the voting process but the voter’s actual voting. However, state law also forbids them from talking to election workers except to report a suspected violation. And they’re strictly forbidden from conversing or communicating with voters. They’re also forbidden from leaving the polling place without the election judge’s permission unless the poll watcher has worked five consecutive hours.

Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School who specializes in election law, put it best in a ProPublica interview last year: “If you’re waiting for the busloads of fraud to arise, and what you get is small American-flag-waving democracy, you begin to go out of your head. It’s like sitting in a field waiting for the UFOs and the UFOs never show up. And then you’re just sitting in a field, which is fine for a couple hours, but polls are open about 15 hours a day.” And for those poll watchers who suspect the worst by the enemy at the cost of favorites on the ballot, the temptation is to claim skullduggery is afoot and you need more latitude to do your job and catch villainy red-handed. And if your party is in power but increasingly anxious about changing demographics and tightening victory margins every two years, the inclination is to alter voting dynamics in ways that favor your party, not the casual, often unsuspecting voter. Before long, few will be sure what’s legal and what’s not anymore, let alone whether the sky is falling.

Allegations galore!

The situation becomes more volatile when race differences bubble up, as I happened upon as Waco Tribune-Herald opinion editor in 2018 at a polling place in a predominantly black neighborhood of Waco (and on the former campus of a historic black college). Swirling charges and counter-charges of impropriety embroiled the mostly white supporters of a white Republican county commissioner candidate and the mostly black supporters of a black Democratic county commissioner candidate. The candidates vied to succeed McLennan County Commissioner Lester Gibson, a deeply revered figure in Waco’s African-American community. Formal complaints of wrongdoing were lodged against each of the two election judges at the Waco Multi-Purpose Community Center. The Republican commissioner candidate's wife alleged the African-American Democratic presiding election judge was swaying voters to vote Democratic, though five sworn written statements from witnesses claimed otherwise. And no less than the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund accused the white Republican alternate election judge of balking at helping voters cast straight-ticket ballots for Democratic candidates “because it bothered her when individuals supported U.S. Representative Beto O'Rourke over U.S. Senator Ted Cruz.” (Footnote: The extremely tight O’Rourke-Cruz contest represented that year’s flashpoint election across Texas, causing many Republicans to contemptuously huff and puff and dismiss the charming Democratic candidate’s Portuguese-Spanish first name as a politically inspired affectation, though my trusted friend, distinguished Texas journalist Carlos Sanchez, an El Paso native like O’Rourke, insists the nickname was given to O’Rourke in his youth by his family. The baseless criticism astounds given that foreign-born Republican Ted Cruz’s first name is Rafael, not Ted.)

African-American election judge Anita Phillips later credited poll watchers for much of the furor at the Waco Multi-Purpose Community Center, "making voters feel uncomfortable and intimidated as they voted, both curbside and inside the vote center. Candidates and poll watchers acted outside their scope to intimidate staff and attempt to intimidate me. My vehicle and license plate were aired on the news as unfounded accusations of voter fraud were reported (and) left me questioning the safety of my family and myself.” White Republican Party Chairman Jon Ker blamed Phillips while acknowledging others acted improperly: "There were accusations back and forth, and there were things that went on that, frankly, if not illegal were highly inappropriate. Electioneering was allowed within the 100-foot limit [of the polling place]. People were talking with voters. A couple of women came in and shot a video and put it on Facebook. Anita Phillips was the election judge.” White McLennan County Democratic Party Chairwoman Mary Duty concurred about overall election dynamics, even as she consistently backed Phillips as blameless in the confusion: “The election in November became very heated. There were a lot of accusations flying both directions. We did our due diligence, took sworn statements from our people and forwarded them to the Secretary of State's Office.” My take from a survey of the busy scene amidst finger-pointing: lots of questionable activity and indignity by all involved, including partisans backing both commissioner candidates. Claims and counter-claims continued simmering well after the 2018 general election before the McLennan County Commissioners Court all the way to the Texas Secretary of State’s Office and, in 2021, the State Capitol.

Nor are countywide, statewide and national races necessary to bring out the worst at the polling place. In a May 2019 municipal election, a poll watcher began hollering and accusing the alternate election judge in Bellmead of changing votes at a computer, then threatened the judge with legal action. At some point, the presiding judge exercised the right given by state law to election judges: Police were summoned. Ironically, this clash involved County Commissioner Lester Gibson’s son Travis, an African-American candidate for the Bellmead City Council, and the white poll watcher tapped by Gibson’s white opponent. County Elections Administrator Kathy Van Wolfe acknowledged the problem in a January 2020 interview conducted by Trib Editor Steve Boggs and me: “Well, we do have a very, very zealous poll watcher in Bellmead and it's the same person for every election, every time they have one. There are laws that govern what they can and can't do. The problem with that is the election judges are just trying to conduct the election. The poll watcher would like to be able to tell the judges what to do and they all want to call and complain.”

Such incidents explain the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund’s opposition to measures in the Texas Legislature further empowering poll watchers. “This bill appears to transfer authority for the safety and integrity of elections to partisan poll watchers, including by preventing an election judge from removing a watcher from a polling place for any reason other than for an offense related to election fraud, which could encourage voter intimidation,” the civil rights organization and law firm stated in a March 25 letter specifically opposing House Bill 6 but just as relevant concerning other bills. “HB 6 also repeatedly uses the phrase ‘purity of the ballot box’ to justify its aim of emboldening partisan watchers. Comparable language regarding the ‘purity of the ballot box’ that is found in the Texas Constitution has deep ties to calls by white legislators in the state to ensure the ‘purity of the Anglo-Saxon race’ by, among other tactics, disenfranchising black Texans. The discretion HB 6 affords partisan operatives, particularly in a state with a long and well-documented history of official and unofficial discrimination against black and Latino voters under the guise of ‘purity,’ creates a substantial risk of operating to intimidate and disproportionately disenfranchise voters of color.”

Three days earlier the civil rights organization took aim at SB 7: “Election administration should not be partisan, yet SB 7 deputizes political operatives with cameras, empowering them to freely harass and intimidate voters. Although Texas law places limitations on who can serve as a poll watcher – requiring that poll watchers be appointed by either a candidate for office, a political party or a proponent or opponent of a ballot measure – SB 7 deputizes and empowers these political operatives to roam freely and record voters in polling locations, which gives them the ability, if not the right, to engage in voter intimidation. SB 7 specifically eliminates Texas’ previous restrictions on watchers recording voters in polling locations, providing opportunities for watchers to target and harass voters using their images from the polling locations.”

Some of the local controversy spilled over into the House Elections Committee’s 20-hour April Fool’s Day hearing on Chairman Briscoe Cain’s somewhat disjointed HB 6. Linda Jann Lewis, the NAACP Waco chapter’s political action chair also affiliated with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, testified of years of harassment by Republican poll watchers targeting the African-American election judge presiding over the one and only early voting location in the heart of Waco’s African-American community: “Approximately six years ago, there were problems at this early voting location and she did what the [state] election code required. She called the police and had a candidate removed, a Republican candidate removed, because he refused and defied her. He was inside the polling place, shaking hands and soliciting voters. As a result of that, there has been an all-out war on McLennan County’s only presiding African-American election judge. We have had in Waco, Texas, in McLennan County, what we call ‘poll watcher overseer syndrome.’” (The word “overseer,” of course, refers to the often cruel managers of plantation slaves in the antebellum South.) Lewis went on to detail harassment of election workers by Republican-dispatched poll watchers, including one who reportedly dogged an election worker into a break area to watch while the election worker took medication. In parting, Lewis warned partisan aggression was discouraging ordinary election workers – many over age 60 – from enlisting for further duty in the line of fire. “Baby boomers – we are the people who run the elections,” she said. “Don’t send us to jail because a poll watcher says they think we did something wrong.”

Over in the Senate, Sen. John Whitmire, a white Harris County Democrat regarded as the dean of that chamber by virtue of his 38 years there, added to such allegations during debate with Sen. Hughes on SB 7, noting Republicans typically place poll watchers in sites where they expect to lose votes, if only to disrupt the process. “In my experience, in the fall [elections],” he said tersely, “there are more poll watchers in minority communities than there are in the general community at large. Take my word for it.” Gracious to a fault, Sen. Hughes said he had never seen or heard evidence of this racial targeting by Republican poll watchers, candidates and party officials. (To his credit, Hughes managed committee hearings and floor debate on Senate Bill 7 with patience, professionalism and grace, unlike boyish House Elections Committee Chairman Cain who at one point abruptly ended a hearing on his own bill after refusing to allow questions about it from visiting Rep. Nicole Collier, chairwoman of the Texas Legislative Black Caucus. Cain’s apparently bungled procedural move not only highlighted House Speaker Dade Phelan’s exceedingly poor judgment in appointing Cain to chair the committee but effectively sidelined hundreds of Texans who traveled to the State Capitol to testify on HB 6, some in favor of his legislation.) Sen. Whitmire’s argument about the GOP targeting minority strongholds was bolstered days later when a leaked video showed a Harris County Republican Party official enlisting poll watchers to stop “voter fraud” in primarily black and brown neighborhoods.

Who's the alpha here?

Obviously, strong feelings dominate the matter. During House Elections Committee testimony on March 18, Angela Smith, founder of the Fredericksburg Tea Party and a poll watcher through three election cycles, acknowledged that "election judges definitely in our area do believe I am adversarial," though she denied she is. She refuted the prediction by Texas Civil Rights Project senior attorney James Slattery that newly empowered poll watchers would create more disturbances in polling places and election venues sufficient to impede voting or the tallying of votes. "Poll watchers such as myself at Central Count [where votes are tabulated at evening's end] usually arrive around 7 in the morning, and I have left as late as 3 in the morning," Smith said. "This is not an easy job and I take offense when I am demonized as someone who is trying to slow the process or get in the way of any of the election officials. I do not believe this is a partisan issue. I think it is very much bipartisan. I think my friends on both sides of the aisle would agree with that." Other poll watchers offered similar testimony with specific allegations of wrongdoing they had witnessed. “I might just point out that efficiency and processing voters is critical, but so is accuracy,” Tea Party Patriots of Eastland County founding member Ruth York told committee members. “Inaccuracy could disenfranchise someone who is eligible to vote. Unlike some of you here, we don’t get to change our vote if our machine malfunctions or whatever.” However, some battle-hardened election officials predicted that further empowering partisan poll watchers would only unsettle matters for earnest election workers.

“A great majority of our election judges and clerks are really good people who give up a whole lot – the whole day for little pay – to make democracy work,” said David Griggs of Dallas, who has served as an election judge or alternate judge in some 65 elections over 27 years. “Personally, I would never kick out a poll watcher without law enforcement help. They’re there and they have a right to be there. But judges need the authority to maintain control of the vote center, just like a judge would to maintain control and order in the courtroom. This bill opens the door for a disruptive poll watcher to push the envelope and then criminalizes the simple exercise of authority by the election judge to handle it. And with regard to the video provisions of this bill, it allows the poll watchers of their own volition to decide to use a video on their phone to record something. We tell our voters not to use their cell phones, yet we’re going to give poll watchers carte blanche to pull out their phones? I mean, what are voters going to think about this?”

Harold Huff, a former research engineer for the Texas A&M University System and poll worker now living in Terlingua in West Texas' rugged Big Bend region, at one point rose to defend election workers who, given the conspiratorial frame of mind obviously driving some of this Republican legislation, appear suspect in intention and deed. "One thing my grandmother said many, many years ago is that our democracy in the state of Texas is defended by the blue-haired ladies of the polling place," he told state senators, including Birdwell. "It's still defended by those blue-haired ladies. Those are the people who are being discussed as some kind of evil government employees bound to shift our elections wrong. They wouldn't do it on a bet. These are honorable people, strong and caring people, and yet many pieces of legislation including this bill [SB 7] set up criminal penalties and tend to criminalize them ahead of the case, simply by setting these ridiculous requirements. They have to maintain control of their polling places. And the poll watchers are not educated, they're not taught, they're not trained, they don't take oaths that are meaningful in any way. None of this legislation addresses penalties for poll watchers misbehaving. The people running the elections at all levels are attempting to do their very best to have the fairest elections we can have. Poll watchers are there for a fixed interest of one kind or another. And it may be the Democratic Party, it may be the Republican Party. They can be the Proud Boys or the Ku Klux Klan. Any of them are eligible to be a poll watcher."

Even those supporting Republican-crafted election reforms have raised concerns about poll watchers. In voicing her support of House Bill 6, Chambers County Clerk Heather Hawthorne stressed the absolute importance of poll-watcher education. “I hate there’s this myth that seems to be hanging in the air that poll watchers have a chip on their shoulder or they’re evil or that nobody wants to be watched,” she told House members. “I think that is not true. The problem with a lot of poll watchers is they’re sent by a candidate, like you and I, and we just say, ‘Please go watch and see what happens.’ They’re not trained. They really don’t understand the election process.” One poll watcher, who testified that she has worked also as an election judge, backed the bill’s provisions on poll watchers but agreed education is needed for watchers and even polling-place workers. Another who has served as a poll worker since retirement in 2016 offered his solution: inserting the Secretary of State’s handbook on poll-watching straight into the state election code. “Once you’ve done that – because it tells them they can’t talk to a voter, it tells them about going outside for the telephone, it says what they can’t and what they can do – I think if you put that in there, you’ll solve your problem.”

During debate with Sen. Hughes, longtime Democratic Sen. Royce West – a towering African-American attorney whose grandfather reportedly witnessed the infamous 1921 Tulsa race massacre – pointedly questioned the lack of state-regimented training for poll watchers, especially with the video component now being added to the electoral arena. At one point, Hughes dismissed the idea of such training for poll watchers given that few enough poll watchers step forward for duty and that training might further discourage their numbers – an interesting bit of logic, given that polling-place workers and election judges are also increasingly difficult to find because of stiffening penalties for innocent mistakes and stupefying complications added to election law every two years.

“What’s going to end up happening, senator, is that you’re going to have an election worker and you’re going to have a poll watcher who are frankly going to push each other,” West told Hughes. “I think what we’re going to end up seeing are disputes that may turn violent if this becomes law between poll watchers and election administrators. They’re going to be testing each other to figure out who is the alpha in that situation.”

The final irony somehow barely casting a shadow on all this “election integrity” legislation, including poll watchers: precious little evidence of election fraud in Texas. To quote Keith Ingram of the Texas Secretary of State's Office on the 2020 elections: “In spite of all the circumstances, Texas had an election that was smooth and secure. Texans can be justifiably proud of the hard work and creativity shown by local county election officials. I am happy to report Texas elections are in good shape.” Of course, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office works closely with local election officials; state legislators do not.

Son of Big Lie!

Poll watchers who pursue their duties with restraint, discernment and integrity may take umbrage at allegations questioning their noble calling. They shouldn’t. Their resentment should be directed at those among their ranks who approach these honorable citizen tasks with overt partisanship and intentional mischief as their overriding goals and may soon be inspired to commit more deception and more anarchy at the polls. Certainly the question of irresponsible partisan watchdogs prompted a defining moment on the Senate floor when Democratic Sen. Sarah Eckhardt asked SB 7’s author whether he would favor inclusion of non-partisan poll watchers – a question that caught Hughes off guard. His answer is telling: “Hadn’t even thought about it. Sure, I think we should talk about it. I really hadn’t thought about it.”

One can concede video evidence shot by earnest poll watchers – especially avowedly non-partisan poll watchers such as, say, the League of Women Voters of Texas – might sort out allegations and counter-allegations concerning partisan conspiracies and poll-worker competence and integrity. Unfortunately, many Republicans view even the league with suspicion because, while the nonprofit steers clear of endorsing candidates and most ballot issues, it actively encourages voting rights – now anathema to the state and national GOP. (The league’s simply stated mission: “Empowering voters. Defending democracy.”) Certainly non-partisan poll-watching might have added clarity to the allegations so plentiful at the Waco Multi-Purpose Community Center back in 2018. Yet even this recourse will suffer in credibility the first time a doctored and misleading video is uploaded to YouTube in defiance of state law or is dispatched to the Texas Secretary of State’s Office and revealed to be fraudulent or deceptive. In acknowledging how polarizing our times are and how misinformation dominates elections today, Sen. Eckhardt even raised the idea of requiring election workers to wear body cameras, much as many law enforcement officers do, to help prove or disprove allegations of wrongdoing. Whatever else, the proposal suggests that, for all the calls for election integrity in the Texas Legislature and other legislatures across our country, the polling place in America is becoming a war zone, not a crucible of democracy.

For the casual voter briefly visiting the polling place, potential encounters with emboldened partisan poll watchers and other “election integrity“ measures concocted by state legislators this season may represent inconvenience at least, annoyance at most. But for those graying citizens who out of quiet, unshowy, genuine patriotism staff our polling places and facilitate the election of those very same legislators, election duty may seem more and more like combat duty, especially with aggressive poll watchers unleashed on them. I’m reminded of my friend David Gray, a local Democratic Party activist to be sure but, during his duties as an election clerk, a straight-shooting citizen bowing first to the increasingly threatened concept of democracy in America, not the Democratic Party. Unfortunately, David very publicly abandoned his polling-place duties in 2015.

“I acknowledge that candidates have the right to have poll watchers, but in today’s system they’re a complete waste of time,” he wrote in a column for me expressing his frustration. “If they want a candidate elected – and that seems to be the ultimate concern – they should be out getting people to the polls and not standing around the polling places trying to intimidate the voters and clerks. The woman in our midst Saturday was unpleasant, readily accusing everyone of dishonesty all day. I personally believe that if you do not believe fellow citizens can be trusted, it very likely says something about your own trustworthiness. But whatever your belief, you do not have the right to bully anyone anywhere at any time for any reason — particularly at a polling place on Election Day.” Toward the end of the column, he recounted his breaking point: “Toward the end of the day, I finally let the situation get the best of me, and I said things to one of the two women making allegations about the election staff that I should not have said. I let her pull me down to her level — which was very low to start with — and that’s why I will work for this system no more. I simply will not let mean-spirited people like these two women make me a part of the problem.”

Nearly six years have passed since David wrote that column and we’ve seen little abatement of the problem. A few days before my retirement from the Tribune-Herald last November, I discussed my interest in serving as a poll worker with McLennan County Elections Administrator Kathy Van Wolfe, herself just weeks from retirement. Since then, I’ve reconsidered. I’m not particularly bothered by the fact that COVID-19 variants are now spreading, threatening some repeat of the pandemic conditions that made voting so perilous in 2020. I am bothered by Republican lawmakers tripping over themselves to draft and pass legislation targeting election workers. Such pursuits represent a cowardly, knee-jerk reaction by a corrupt party beholden to a corrupt former president and “the Big Lie” that soothes his king-sized ego and reassures deluded disciples and dupes that the votes were always on his side of the disputed election ledger. A few more stormy election cycles must now pass involving election workers, voters and what a Republican Party official enthusiastically described as an “election integrity brigade” overwhelming and disrupting polling places, possibly with the very same twisted, pent-up impulses that led to the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Only after further confrontations, some testy, some possibly violent, will someone in the Statehouse file legislation mandating rigorous training, restrictions and somber oaths for poll watchers and stiff penalties when they get out of line – penalties just as stiff as those now threatening embattled election workers.

Strap on your guns!

Perhaps weary, beleaguered election officials should welcome House Bill 530, which would codify in law Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s non-binding 2018 ruling. To quote the Texas Secretary of State’s subsequent interpretation, “a presiding judge [who] possesses a handgun license is permitted to carry a handgun while serving as an election judge on Election Day in limited circumstances.” The ruling draws from a Texas Court of Criminal Appeals 1913 decision, according to Paxton’s ruling: “That court concluded that because a presiding election judge had the same power as a district judge to enforce order and keep the peace, and because a district judge could carry arms to a polling location, the presiding election judge likewise had authority to do so.” During a March 18 Texas House Homeland Security and Public Safety Committee hearing, proponents of HB 530 repeatedly stressed that the right to go armed in the polling place should go beyond the bill at hand and be extended to alternate election judges and clerks, and expanded to include early voting as well as Election Day. One imagines this might serve to restrain and discourage unruly poll watchers who have yet to secure the right to go armed into election venues with anything more than attitudes and recording devices.

“It is difficult for me to ask for more [polling-place] volunteers, especially female volunteers, elderly or disabled volunteers, and ask them to disarm in order to serve the community in remote parts of the county,” said Smith County Republican Women spokeswoman Dee Chambless, who has served as both a poll worker and poll watcher and will be certified to serve as an election judge next election. “I gave up my gun in order to serve. I did so but I didn’t like it. And let’s be honest: The reason why is because there’s a lot of emotion in this [last] election and volunteers were essentially in a gun-free zone for the day because you couldn’t have a gun in the polling place. So I was not able to defend myself if I needed to and I think it’s unfair to ask our volunteers to do so.” Harris County resident Alexie Swirsky, who has worked various duties in elections over the past four years (and wore a black Gun Owners of America “Victory or Death: No Compromise” T-shirt at the committee hearing), said the one time a heated confrontation arose in the polling place in her presence, police didn’t arrive for 45 minutes by which time the dispute had cooled. And too often police don’t understand election law sufficiently to settle matters anyway, she said. “If the police need to be involved,” she said, “I as election judge want them to be able to read the law and easily understand the true meaning of it, so the election can be conducted in proper fashion.”

All this left Democratic state Rep. Rhetta Bowers aghast after recent history: “I just have to say: 2020 was a different kind of election year. I myself did have to call police to a polling-place location, and have been at polling locations where the police did have to be called, and I just don’t know with the divisiveness of the country and sometimes our state if it’s a good idea to have guns at polling locations.” Houston resident John Robert Behrman, retired from a career that included tenure at Houston’s Manned Spacecraft Center and the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, offered articulate pushback on HB 530: “We may be at the point where unobtrusive and systematic enforcement of existing law is more effective than grandstanding with new laws or other forms of security theater. In particular, I have serious reservation about this bill, which has blossomed – namely, the author of this bill, the attorney general, keeps talking about election judges. There are two kinds of election judges. There’s the presiding judge unless the presiding judge is not there, in which case the alternate judge is presiding, and they are drawn from two different adversarial parties. Introducing guns into that environment strikes me as an arms race. All the election workers there are to protect the voters. You’re not there to protect yourself, you’re there to protect the voters. You take that oath. And it’s labor-intensive work. You have very little ability to be hypervigilant like somebody assigned to [stand guard] at a military installation. You have no situational awareness. These [voters] are right here, and you’re having to pay attention to them individually. You’re in no position to make good defensive use of a pistol.”

Some proposals for compromise were raised, such as ensuring concealed-carry-only protocols prevail; greater involvement by county sheriffs in safeguarding polling places (possibly putting to real work some of those sheriff’s posses usually reserved for parades and little else); and, ironically, the idea of instead arming poll watchers because, Behrman said, “they just sit there in a well-run precinct being bored to tears.” In any case, the committee approved the bill pretty much without any news coverage, sending it on to the full House by a 7-2 vote, only for subsequent House passage of another bill scrapping licenses and training requirements to carry handguns in Texas promising more apprehension and more volatility in the polling place assuming the Senate passes all this legislation. Stay tuned.

Amidst all this, we can but hope for something of the atmosphere that McLennan County Democratic Party chairwoman, former classroom teacher and pizza restauranteur Mary Duty suggested for the serious, mindful business of voting in a Feb. 22, 2020, Tribune-Herald column: “The polling place should be as quiet as a library on the eve before final exams. Silence creates a space where people can think and take their time on balloting choices – and longer times are more likely in general elections now that voters can no longer vote straight-ticket with the push of a button (hardly a problem in primary elections). People who disrupt, speak to voters, editorialize on candidates, curse or use racial slurs should be asked to leave.”