Bexar fortunate Callanen helms its elections

It’s one of the most crucial jobs in our society. It’s also a thankless one. Serving as an elections administrator in the 2020s means being subjected to insults, attacks, threats, wild accusations and conspiracy theories.

There’s a very real danger that in the years ahead, this country will grapple with a crisis when it comes to finding enough people willing to take the abuse heaped on election workers.

In Bexar County, we have an elections administrator who loves her job. Someone who has managed the office for the past 18 years and has a history of consistently running smooth elections. Someone who has never given the slightest indication of political favoritism to any party or faction. Someone who delights in praising the hard work of the staffers who work for her.

And despite all that, there are people who want to run Jacque Callanen out of office.

The day after the November 2020 election, Callanen announced that she planned to resign before the 2024 presidential election.

She was exhausted at the end of a long and stormy election cycle complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic and unprecedented levels of voting by mail. Her announcement reflected that weariness.

Three years later, Callanen, 78, remains in office and seems open to the possibility of continuing in her post for next year’s election. Much depends on how difficult the environment becomes for her.

The Texas Organizing Project successfully sued the county in 2020 (when they were joined by MOVE Texas) and 2022, arguing that Callanen’s decision to reduce the number of county polling sites constituted voter suppression.

Callanen countered by saying that Bexar County’s 2019 move to countywide election-day polling locations made the voting process easier and allowed for the elimination of sites where turnout was extremely low — in some cases, fewer than 50 voters over a 12-hour period.

For her, the move represented an attempt to use limited resources in the most efficient possible way. But progressive groups such as MOVE Texas and Radical Registrars see Callanen as an impediment to election access and have called for her to step down. They’ve been joined in that effort by Precinct 4 Democratic County Commissioner Tommy Calvert.

In recent years, Callanen also has faced heat from the political right — namely the unsubstantiated 2019 suggestions from Cynthia Brehm, who was then the chair of the Bexar County

She’s earned the right to remain in the job

Republican Party, that ballots were tampered with in the elections office during the mayoral runoff between Greg Brockhouse and Ron Nirenberg.

This is the season for Texas election officials to be forced out. Four of the state’s largest counties — Harris, Dallas, Tarrant and Williamson — have lost their elections administrators this year.

Last year, the entire staff of the Gillespie County elections office, including Elections Administrator Anissa Herrera, resigned.

Herrera told the Fredericksburg Standard-Radio Post that she began receiving death threats after the 2020 election, when then-President Donald Trump and his GOP loyalists persistently argued that voter fraud had cost Trump the election.

In Bexar County, before we start pushing for change, we might want to remember what things were like before Callanen took over the elections office.

In November 2002, under the leadership of her predecessor, Cliff Borofsky, Bexar County did not start counting Election Day ballots until 17 hours after the polls had closed, a disaster that prompted an apology to local voters from then-County Judge Nelson Wolff.

Callanen brought the elections office into the 21st century and oversaw its transition to a faster, more reliable voting system.

We should also remember that she’s operating in a climate of intense pressure from Republican lawmakers and state officials.

In 2020, Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Harris County’s clerk for sending out unsolicited mail-in ballot applications to voters.

The next year, state lawmakers passed Senate Bill 1, a package of voting restrictions that made it a felony for Texas counties to send unsolicited mailin ballot applications to voters.

This year, the state abolished Harris County’s elections department.

If Callanen is cautious when it comes to attempting new methods to open up the voting process, she has valid reason for concern.

If she decides to step down, Callanen should give the county as much notice as possible to allow for a smooth transition as we go into what will surely be a fraught and intensely scrutinized 2024 election cycle.

But if she wants to stay, she has earned the right to do so.

Staff file photo Remember what elections were like before Jacque Callanen, below? Bexar County Election supervisor Cliff Borofsky, left, is surrounded by ballots in 2002, when Bexar County was the last county in Texas to tabulate all its ballots.

Josie Norris/Staff photographer