For some veterans, service to the county doesn’t end once they take off the uniform.
At least that’s the argument retired Army Lt. Col. Martha Spinks is trying to make.
She founded the organization Support and Defend last year in San Antonio to get veterans involved with defending the Constitution through civic engagement.
She has a mission; recruiting veterans to serve as poll workers, poll monitors, election judges, election clerks and volunteer deputy registrars this November.
“It’s a continuation of your service and your loyalty to your country to get involved in the election right now,” she said, as she’s been telling veterans at election-worker recruitment events around the city this year.
The organization’s members believe that the military discipline, leadership and integrity veterans have make them uniquely qualified to serve the community in these capacities.
“The oath still stands, whether you’re wearing the uniform or not, we want you to serve your country again,” Spinks said.
Telling voters that veterans serve as poll workers has actually been proven to increase voter trust in the election process. The University of Maryland’s Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement conducted research this summer and found that even the most distrustful voters are 15% more likely to trust the process when they hear veterans and their family members are manning the polls.
Building trust in elections
In recent months, Bexar County Elections has been working through hiccups with the state’s TEAM voter registration system.
“We’re wanting to build voter confidence, but TEAM has destroyed the voter confidence that’s in place,” Bexar County Elections Administrator Michele Carew told the San Antonio Report in August.
Updates to the state’s voter registration system caused a massive registration backlog last year, but Bexar County must use the system through the midterms until January.
After mistrust was sown during the 2020 election, the jobs of election administrators became harder, with many reporting harassment and lots leaving the industry all together.
Carew only arrived at her Bexar County job in February of last year, after she was previously pushed out of her Hood County position by those dissatisfied with the 2020 election results and her leadership.
As part of his ongoing efforts to undermine the results of the 2020 election, President Donald Trump wrote a letter to Gov. Greg Abbott in 2021 asking for an audit of the results in Texas, a state that Trump won.
“Texans know voting fraud occurred in some of their counties. Let’s get to the bottom of the 2020 Presidential Election Scam!” Trump wrote in the letter.
A subsequent state audit found the state’s elections to be secure.
Texas now also has a new top dog at the helm of statewide elections this year. Robert Howden assumed the role of interim secretary of state after Jane Nelson left her job as Texas’ chief election official in July.
Managing elections for a state as large as Texas, and one without an online voter registration system, is not always smooth sailing.
Just this week The Texas Tribune and Votebeat reported state officials discovered that tens of thousands of voter registration applications were not processed due to an error by the Texas Department of Public Safety. In Bexar County this amounted to 45,000 unprocessed applications.
Getting veterans to the polls
Support and Defend isn’t the only organization aiming to recruit veterans to win over the hearts and minds of election skeptics.
Vet the Vote is a nonpartisan organization working to recruit 250,000 veterans and military family members to serve as poll workers in the upcoming midterms.
They’ve had substantial success.
Since launching in 2022, over 168,000 members of the military community have signed up to work the elections. The organization has hubs in five states, Texas being one of them.
With 1.5 million veterans, no state has more recruitment opportunities than Texas.
Texas lead Camellia Jackson said the organization came to the state in light of poll worker shortages from the pandemic and an aging volunteer base.
As a Navy veteran, Navy spouse and Navy mom, Jackson said military families are patriotic, they come from all walks of life and they know how to put differences aside to work together to serve the nation — making them ideal election workers.
“There’s a sense of comfort in knowing that somebody who’s already committed to serve has signed up to serve again,” she said.
She said veterans are trusted and respected by the general public, but more importantly, they are known as strict rule followers.
“In the midst of the doubt that’s been sown since 2020 and 2022, there’s a sense of security when you see somebody with the Vietnam veterans hat on during the process,” Jackson said.
Marine Corps veteran Mia Garcia, the executive director of the Texas Veterans Network at Combined Arms, said the organization’s Civic After Service initiative is also aiming to fill the poll worker shortage with veterans.
“These guys and gals, they raise their right hand to go serve their country, not knowing if they they’d ever make it back. They have so much faith in this process that they would register as a poll worker,” Garcia said. “It builds trust in the community.”
She said that though some distrust in the election process exists, having veterans visibly involved in the process can help mitigate that.
And for veterans, an opportunity to continue serving is hard for some to pass up.
“Being able to find the sort of opportunity to serve your country as a poll worker is something that really resonates with us,” she said.
The San Antonio Report’s military and veterans coverage is supported by Report for America.
