Conspiracy theorists and 16-hour days: Inside the stress elections officials face ahead of the midterms – By Pooja Salhotra (Texas Tribune) / Oct 4, 2022
Running elections in Texas has never been easy. But since 2020, the scrutiny elections administrators face has grown — even in small Republican-controlled counties that former President Donald Trump carried.
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NACOGDOCHES — Since Todd Stallings began working in Nacogdoches County’s elections office in 2003, his responsibilities have grown exponentially.
So has his stress.
First came a shift toward digital voting records, along with new state legislation that created more duties for elections officials. Then, accusations of foreign interference in the 2016 presidential race stoked the public’s fear about election integrity. And conspiracy theories about voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election have led to heightened scrutiny.
Although election deniers at one point concentrated their efforts in states like Arizona and Georgia, supporters of former President Donald Trump have since sent a barrage of public information requests to elections offices nationwide, including those in the smallest and reddest Texas counties, where Trump won handsomely.
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