Jane Nelson
Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson’s unexpected departure only a few months before the November midterm election, which includes one of the most hotly contested U.S. Senate races the state has seen in years, has some local election officials and voting rights advocates worrying the transition will complicate their ability to administer a smooth election.
“It’s the unknown, the uncertainty that is scary,” said Tandi Smith, the Kaufman County elections administrator. “Are we going to continue to receive guidance? Are we going to be ensured that we’ll be prepared for any coming changes? We just don’t know.”
Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, is required by law to appoint a new secretary as soon as possible. His office, in an emailed statement, said the new appointee would be announced “at a later date.”
Nelson, who has been the state’s chief election official for more than three years, last week announced that she’d be stepping down from the role effective July 17. Nelson’s departure will happen just as election officials across the state are preparing in earnest for the November general election. In the summer months, they’ll be recruiting election workers, seeking polling locations, and processing voter registration applications, among other duties.
Some voting rights advocates say a new appointee may want to direct local election officials to change election procedures, which could lead to chaos and confusion for voters. Although the secretary of state’s office has no law enforcement authority and can’t change the law, it can issue election law opinions on how to implement election and voting rules.
“If the new secretary of state has a laundry list of demands that election administrators can’t meet, that’s going to throw our elections into disarray,” said Emily Eby French, policy director at Common Cause Texas. French noted that there were three secretaries of state between 2017 and Nelson’s appointment in 2023, some of whom remained in the role only for about a year before resigning.
“I am very concerned that we are going to go back to that period of instability that we were in before Jane Nelson,” she said.
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Nelson’s sudden departure “shouldn’t have any noticeable impact on the ability of the election officials in Texas to run free and fair elections,” said Joshua Ferrer, an assistant professor of government at American University. Ferrer has done research on the recent heightened turnover of state and local election officials across the country.
“Even when officials leave, the replacements, and the staff that are still there are able to do an equally good job,” Ferrer said.
See here for the background. With respect to Emily Eby French and Joshua Ferrer, my fear is not incompetence. My fear is that Abbott will appoint some slavering election, who will echo all the current talking points and do everything in their power to make it hard for anyone they don’t like to register, vote, and have their votes counted. We certainly can’t count on Abbott to have any integrity here. Maybe he won’t introduce a chaos monkey on the theory that it could cause some logistical problems for himself – if you believe you’re a strong favorite to win, you don’t want to upset the board and introduce a bunch of needless randomness into the system. That’s probably the best hope. But never count out the possibility of Abbott just being a dick.