Voting rights advocates are pressing Bexar County commissioners to replace Bexar County Elections Administrator Jacque Callanen before the 2024 elections.
Callanen has held the role since 2005, and indicated after the 2020 presidential election that it would be her last.
“Here we are, months away from a primary, and the county has not even posted a job description,” said Valerie Reiffert, executive director of Radical Registrars, a nonprofit aimed at voter registration and education. “It is past time for a new elections administrator. We need one who is engaged and working for the people.”
Texas’ primary election is among the nation’s earliest, on March 5, and includes primaries for two Commissioners Court positions, one state Senate seat, all state House of Representative seats, and Congressional seats along with the presidential primary.
Callanen has been the target of two lawsuits in the last four years over her plans to reduce the number of voting locations in Bexar County to prioritize resources at the busiest locations. Both times a judge ruled against her, causing a last-minute scramble to determine which polling places to keep open.
Bexar County spokeswoman Monica Ramos said Tuesday that Callanen hasn’t given any indication she plans to step down from the role.
Callanen said in a text message Tuesday that she’s taking it “election by election.”
Elections administrators across the state have been under fire since the 2020 presidential election, primarily from activists on the right.
Last year Gillespie County’s entire elections staff resigned months before the November election due to threats made against them. Tarrant County’s elections director resigned under political pressure after the county elected a new conservative county judge, then went on serve as Dallas County’s elections chief.
Headed into the 2022 midterm Callanen said her office was among those inundated with “frivolous” open records requests from election deniers, but she maintained the support of the Republican Party of Bexar County, which sought to assure voters she was running fair elections.
Since then that support from local Republicans has evaporated, with the local party writing a letter in May to County Judge Peter Sakai calling for an investigation into her office. At the same time, Callanen faces renewed criticism from left-leaning organizations that want an elections administrator who will do more to expand voting access, including putting a voting location in the county’s adult detention center.
(Similar efforts have made Harris County a target of the Republican-led Legislature, which this year passed a law eliminating the county’s elections administrator position.)
On Tuesday, Radical Registrars was joined by representatives of MOVE Texas and the Texas Civil Rights Project, two other groups that seeks to register and engage voters.
“When a large percentage of the voting rights organizations represented here today point out to us their dissatisfaction with our elections administrator, we better listen,” Commissioner Tommy Calvert (Pct. 4) said.
Bexar County’s elections administrator is hired by an election commission consisting of the county judge, county clerk, county tax assessor-collector and the county party chairs.
Sakai said in an interview after Tuesday’s meeting that the county needs to get through this year’s Nov. 7 election on state constitutional amendments before deciding whether the board should review Callanen’s performance.
Though commissioners don’t have formal authority over the role, Sakai said he would seek guidance from them on whether to start that process.
“She’s done an admirable job, but obviously, there are a lot of criticisms of her past performance,” Sakai said in an interview Tuesday. “I want to see how this election goes. And then obviously, if we’re to make a decision, we really do have to make it pretty quickly because of next year’s” presidential primary and election.
