High Turnout Wide Margins recently traveled to the 40th annual Election Center conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, and spoke with election administrations and officials from across the county about how they do the work of elections in their communities.
In this episode, hosts Eric Fey and Brianna Lennon speak with Chris McGinn. For the past year and a half, he’s been working as the executive director of the Texas Association of County Election Officials [TACEO]
They spoke about some of the changes McGinn is helping make to the association, how the association balances the needs of some of the largest and smallest counties in the country, and about what’s next.
High Turnout, Wide Margins Credits:
Managing Editor: Rebecca Smith
Managing Producer: Aaron Hay
Associate Producer: Katie Quinn
Digital Producer: Mark Johnson
Transcription of the episode is as follows:
Chris McGinn: 254 counties, I think 200 of them are less than 50,000 people, right? And then another 100 of them, or 150 are literally less than, like, 15,000 people. So, you have this huge, and then you have Harris County and Dallas and Collin and some of these other Metroplex counties. So, you have this huge divide — the problems are the same, the how you approach it is very different.
[High Turnout Wide Margins Introduction]
Brianna Lennon: Welcome to another exciting episode of High Turnout Wide Margins. We are, I was gonna say live —
Eric Fey: Live on tape.
Brianna Lennon: We're live on tape, in person, at the Election Center annual conference. It's the 40th anniversary, celebration I guess, of the Election Center. This is Breanna Lennon. I am the County Clerk in Boone County, Missouri, and with me is my co-host —
Eric Fey: Eric Fey, Director of Elections in St Louis County, Missouri.
Brianna Lennon: And today we are talking to —
Chris McGinn: Chris McGinn, the executive director of the Texas Association of County Election Officials.
Brianna Lennon: Thanks for being here and talking to us. We were talking earlier that we've tried to talk to every executive director that, currently, the state associations have, and you are like our white whale,
Laughter
Chris McGinn: All right.
Brianna Lennon: And so, now —
Chris McGinn: You’ve got me.
Brianna Lennon: — we're finishing the complete set, and we'll start with just our first question that we always ask people, which is, how did you get into the elections world?
Chris McGinn: Into the elections world? So, I actually had an internship. I was a geography major in college, and it did not require a language or math to be a geography major, and that's sad but true. And I got an internship with the elections office, in the local elections office in Pitt County, North Carolina, because they were doing redistricting. It was the year 2000. So, my first job was converting 911 addresses to physical addresses for elections, and then they don't let you go, right? Once you get in elections, they never let you out. So, they gave me a full time job, and from that point on, I worked in county elections offices, and then eventually went through and got my master's, my PhD, and started teaching political geography, and that was my full time gig. Started teaching in the CERA program and the state certification programs and have been doing that ever since. So, it's been 25 years now in elections.
Eric Fey: So, 25 years in elections. That's — now that's a long time.
Chris McGinn: Yeah.
Eric Fey: It used to not be, but, you know, with all the turnover, it's a long time. So, what led you to the job in Texas being from North Carolina?
Chris McGinn: So, yeah. So, I'm in North Carolina, like I said, I'm a political geography professor at North Carolina Central, and TAEA, at the time, which was a Texas Association of Election Administrators, received a grant to fund an executive director position. Three year grant currently, we hope to renew that, but at that point, when they advertised it, nobody wanted to quit their EA job to be executive director. So, they advertised it. I was still teaching REO [Registered Election Official] classes – been doing that for probably 10 years there, presenting at their conference. So, we were in Amarillo when this grant came through, and I was presenting at the conference, and I said, you know, “can I apply?” They didn't see a problem with it, so went through the whole interview process, and I know there were some folks that were very hesitant because I was out of state, but the running joke is, “I can make it from Greensboro to Austin quicker than El Paso can make it to Austin.” So, you know, that commute is not too bad. So, been doing it now for about a year and four months. I started May of ‘24 kind of putting it in place and growing the association, that whole thing.
Brianna Lennon: So, when the association got the grant, what were you charged with as the executive director to, you know, like — I assume, because we have an executive director, as well in Missouri. We had a kind of a defined role that we wanted, and it's evolved over time — but what was the original intention?
Chris McGinn: So, I think this role has evolved even in a year or so that we've been doing it. So, originally it was to really increase the kind of operational structure of the association. The association has been around since the 80s. Actually, we're, our 40th year is next year in ‘26, but it really was kind of a loose, almost social organization. At the time, even just last year, I think, there was only about 150 of the 254 counties in Texas that were represented in the association. There were bylaws, but no strict operational plans. The board turnover was kind of every year, so it was hard to get anything kind of consistent. So, that was the first charge to do that and then increase membership and then have an impact on kind of legislation moving forward, and kind of the lobbyist aspect of it. So, that's all the stuff we've been working on over the past year. So, been pretty successful.
Eric Fey: Do you know — were there folks in the Texas Association that were kind of prime movers, and what were they hoping to achieve, you know, why was the need identified there?
Chris McGinn: It's actually been talked about for three or four years prior to getting this grant. The grant is funded by HEI [Houston Endowment Inc.] endowment out of Harris County, out of Houston. And there was some hesitation because of the political affiliation of Harris County — that legislators at the state level would not see kindly to the money coming in. So, Election Center got a big grant and essentially we’re a subcontractor on that grant. I think people felt more comfortable that way.
There was some split, and there continues to be some split, in the association with the membership of kind of the expansion and inclusion of so. So, Texas is split between election administrators that are appointed and county clerks, and, in some cases, tax assessors that run elections. The previous association was just election administrators. This grant kind of created a need to be all inclusive, and there's some hesitation from some of the old timers about the inclusion of the county clerks and the tax assessors. Now, overwhelmingly, over the past year, it's gone super successful. So, I think we've eliminated some of that, but once they now see the need for just a person that can organize the structure of everything going on, right? And we know all you guys have full time gigs and full time jobs, so stuff didn't get done that needed to get done, and I think the biggest thing that we saw — we just completed the legislative session — was the lobbying efforts and the kind of cohesive message that we were able to develop because there was that position that was able to kind of bring that all together.
Brianna Lennon: I am interested in how — because we have done it the reverse, where we've gotten an executive director, then we've moved to a certification program, and Texas is the opposite — how that has informed some of the stuff that you're working on? Because if you don't have to work on creating the certification program, are you administering the program? How has that kind of fit into what you have to do?
Chris McGinn: Yeah, so the program existed, but it was always through Election Center, right? So, one of the goals and the missions in this grant was to — the primary focus of the association would be in continuing education. So, outside of just the REO classes, which were offered once a year at the midwinter conference. Now we're really focused on developing more continuing education year round. So, something that we actually just completed, and I worked with one of my colleagues at Central and we provided an Intro to GIS class for all the folks to take, you know, we had about 100 counties or 100 people sign up from about 80 counties. Just geographic information systems at the elections level, right? And it was only four weeks, but it was two hours a week, and what they now realize is the skills that they can develop and the help that they can have. So, programs like that is what we're trying to kind of continue to develop and formalize. The members have this need for continuing education and more skills and all that stuff and and really it only existed in that one class. So, it's the expansion of, kind of, the not traditional REO certification, just to continuing edu side of things.
Eric Fey: I know that one challenge we have in Missouri between large jurisdictions and small jurisdictions —that's a challenge everywhere. Of course, Texas being the biggest, that's, you know, everything's bigger in Texas, you've, you have some of the biggest counties in the country and some of the most sparsely populated counties in the country. Is it a particular challenge to have training programs that are relevant to both of those groups of people? And you also talked about legislation, you know, I mean, I think it's very beneficial to bring those disparate folks together to try to have a single voice on advocacy, but it seems like it would be a particular challenge in Texas.
Chris McGinn: Yeah. So, again, I've been coming there for so long, but then you start to realize the geography. 254 counties — I think 200 of them are less than 50,000 people, right? And then another 100 of them, or 150 are literally less than, like, 15,000 people. So, you have this huge — and then you have Harris County and Dallas and Collin and some of these other Metroplex counties. So, you have this huge divide — the problems are the same, the how do you approach it is very different, you know? The small counties with their one or two person staffs have to do the same stuff, but with one or two people. What we found legislatively is that oftentimes, especially post-COVID, the legislators like to target Harris County. It's kind of the “Kingdom of Harris,” as we call it there, and they have no problem, which I guess is a good thing, putting in population constraints based on the legislation, right? So, some counties are exempt if they're less than x, y and z, which is a good thing because that allows us to attack legislators more strategically if we know that the legislators are willing to put those population brackets in place because I think they recognize that it's really hard to have a universal enforcement of anything in a state that’s that large and that diverse.
But it is a challenge because — I'm dealing with it right now. The small counties feel like nobody ever pays attention to them. The large counties feel like they're the center of the world, right? When you look at the dispersion of actual registered voters, of course, it's in, you know, 15 counties, you get 75% of the registered voters are there. So, the small counties, I hate to say, can get away with stuff, but aren't going to get the attention that they want, but obviously their members, or the county clerks and the EAs — it's important that they're doing a job correctly, because if they screw up an election, it's going to be national news just as if Harris County does, right?
Brianna Lennon: Can you talk a little bit about the way that elections are funded in Texas, and when legislation comes through that requires different things because the other challenge when you have a larger jurisdiction is sometimes you also have more local money to kind of offset some of it and the smaller communities don't have that.
Chris McGinn: Yeah, so that's a huge challenge with some of the legislation that's been passed the past couple times with especially extending early voting hours, requiring early voting hours to be, you know, on weekends — even in those smaller jurisdictions that the staff and the funding they just didn't have. Texas is unique in a couple different ways. They have something called chapter 19 funds, which the state reimburses counties with extra funds that they can use at their discretion based on the number of voter registrations that they process. Well, that doesn't really help small counties because nobody's moving there, right? So, the large counties have those discretionary funds.
The other thing that I think Texas is somewhat unique, in my experience, is that they charge back a lot of the cost of the party primaries back to the political parties, at least on election day, not necessarily during early voting, right? So, that gets into this whole other challenge because you're mandated to have so many early voting hours, but you can't charge the parties and so on and so forth. So, there are those unique challenges we see that the large counties obviously have, you know, government affairs offices that can handle a lot of the PR and the press stuff that these small county offices may have to deal with — whether it's voter education or anything like that. So, that's one of the things that the association is trying to focus on, is, how can we help with some of the grant funds and kind of mitigate or fill the gaps of some of the needs of some of the smaller communities with regards to whether it be not traditional unfunded mandates, but things like, you have to increase your hours, and now you got to figure out where to come from.
One of the things that we're on the approach right now is a bill that was recently passed, 2753 that does not go into effect until ‘27, but that mandates one continuous voting period and extended hours on the Saturday, Sunday, Monday before Election Day, and our small jurisdictions don't know how they're going to handle that, right? And that is actually something I want to talk to you guys in Missouri [about] because you guys do something similar to what they're trying to implement in Texas. So, that's something that funding is going to be an issue. The legislators don't understand why it's additional FTS [final testing and sealing. “Why do you need more people? We don't understand,” right? And then we're trying to, now, fight that fight of all the needs that you wrote in this bill is going to cost extra money for folks, you know, whether it be the large counties or the small counties. So, I think that's just a consistent need — is the again, unfunded mandates, with the way legislators pass some of the stuff.
[High Turnout Wide Margins Midbreak]
Eric Fey: In this vein of funding, but in a little different tact — funding for the association itself?
Your position, you said, was initially funded by a grant. I know that's something in Missouri we struggled with because we saw the need for an executive director, but we didn't have the funds to do it at the time, so we restructured our dues model, and, you know, and it's based on, now, county size and assessed valuation. What's the situation in Texas? Have you had to look into things like that?
Chris McGinn: Yeah. So, that's actually, that was the next charge that has evolved, right? Is sustainability of this? Because, I'm thinking, nobody wants the position to go away now, right? They see the value of it, which is good for, you know, my wife's spending or whatever else, but it's the sustainability and where we're going to come from if the grant funds dry up. So, we're looking at the change in the dues models, we're looking at additional funding sources that may come from other nonprofits, similar grant stuff. What we're really trying to do right now is kind of bank up a nest egg that, at least for the next couple years, if the grant does dry up, immediately, some of these progresses can be funded. Really the basic — getting into the finances. Before I took this job, it was collect dues, get some sponsorships, host a big party, rinse and repeat, right? That's what it was. Since 2020, they've financed a lobbyist. So, that is something that was kind of a fixed cost that came out, but the other fixed cost, not even just my position, was things like QuickBook accounts and, you know, the website and stuff like that were not part of those fixed costs, necessarily, but they want those to continue. So, that's what we're really trying to work on now, and as our board turns over, and our incoming president in January, that's really her focus is — how do we continue this going forward, if those grant funds dry up? So, sponsorships are a big thing, but, as you can imagine, the political partisan assumptions of certain voting machine companies, and those types of things gets labeled. So, we don't want to rely primarily on that. Dues, I think, is where it's going to come into play — is changing the due structure and trying to increase some of that revenue there.
Brianna Lennon: You can feel free to not answer this question, if you want to, but as an executive director of such a large organization, and I mean that like geographically and just diversification of different people that you are serving — how have you tried, how have you navigated prioritizing who needs you and when, especially since you're remote? Because new people come in, they need a little more hand holding. Larger jurisdictions probably have different challenges, and they want you to do things too. How does, how has that worked?
Chris McGinn: One of the things that we realized is, all of a sudden, literally, this summer, with a number of things that happened — a bunch of people are contacting the association saying “They want, they need.” The good thing about that is now all of a sudden we have legitimacy that we could solve their problems because before this, they never even contacted the association because they thought they can't do anything for them, right? So, that's a unique challenge.
Me personally, it is kind of identifying those places that just want to go about and do their job and don't really care about being part of the association, but they're going to be affected by us, so have to be included in it. The folks that are a little panicked unnecessarily sometimes, right? So, over the past year and a half, you kind of identify those personalities of who actually has legitimate concerns. The biggest thing that I'm starting to now understand [in] the county environment is who their state reps and state elected officials are that are going to either benefit us or hurt us in the next legislative session, right? Because sometimes those are the counties and the locations that we have to focus on that we could then kind of trickle that message upward. But one of the key things that, to your point, one of the key things that the incumbent president is doing with regards to the continuing education is we're going to hopefully purchase a learning management system that actually can structure onboarding, that we can just deploy, log you into this and it has all these courses that you can go through. Because, right now, there's no formal way of doing that. It was, “Hey, we got a new hire. What do we do?” And we try to kind of have a not formal mentoring program, or they're geographically based or voting equipment based or size based — “Contact these people. They're good at it,” but I think that that's the goal over next two or three years, is with this learning management system, we literally have, you know, election 101 courses that, if you're a brand new EA or clerk, “take this course and go through,” literally, “with quizzes and little things to get them on board.”
Because the Secretary of State's office that oversees elections provides pseudotraining once a year, but really they leave it on the counties to figure it out, and with the turnover — whether it be due to the choice of people retiring or turnover because of other reasons, we see a lot of that taking place, and there's really not good protocols in place at the county level to for people to know what an EA does or what a clerk does with regards to election responsibility. So we're hoping that these learning management systems and the kind of this philosophy besides continuing edu can solve some of those issues [of] me or the board running around, trying to do it one-on-one, because it is large and problematic.
Brianna Lennon: I have a kind of follow up question to my other question.
Chris McGinn: Okay
Brianna Lennon: Before you jumped in —
Eric Fey: Sorry.
Brianna Lennon: No, it made sense to ask the question then. It's kind of the inverse of the other question, which is, when you have folks that are having trouble, but are not reaching out to the association — how have you been navigating that?
Chris McGinn: So, one of the things that I've discovered is how many people didn't do the things they're supposed to do and probably got away with it because they're in a small jurisdiction somewhere that is not very bipartisan. So, as long as the right people win, then there's no big deal. Those are the people we're trying to include in this, right? Those are the people that we're actually actively recruiting to be part of the association. A lot of that is kind of in this messaging and marketing with county clerks, right? What we see, and it's not totally consistent, but most of the small jurisdictions are county clerks that were never part of our association because they have their own association. Most of them have so many other duties within the county clerk's office that elections falls kind of by the wayside. What we're trying to show them is the value of being part of our association — to support them when they get into those issues. I think what I found is that those folks that have those issues, it is literally just in the moment, and they reach out and figure it out, and then go on with their day with their other county clerk activities. In some of these classes — [20:19] I won't put it on record that I've monitored, but some of these classes, you can see some of the questions that come up or in listservs and chats, and it's like, “Oh, we need to reach out to those people because if they're asking that question, God knows what they're interpreting with law as, right? So, it's just a way, again, even this position justifying it, it's kind of the 30,000 foot view of allowing to assess, you know, the environment on the ground, and who needs more attention or not? And I used to say all the time, when I was in elections, we had these rovers, and I used to say if the rovers are hanging out in your precinct on Election Day it's either because you had good food or you really bad at your job, and they know where they need to be. So, you need to determine why they're there. So, I'll say the same thing to my Texas counties. If I'm contacting you all the time, it's either because you're not doing things right or you got something I need. So, it's probably the latter.
Eric Fey: So, looking across the whole country — only a few states have executive directors of their state association. I assume other states are maybe kicking the tires on the idea. From your perspective, as somebody who's done this now for a little while, what advice, if any, do you have for other states, maybe kicking the tires on this idea?
Chris McGinn: Yeah, I'm actually talking to a lot of my old colleagues in North Carolina because they're kicking the tires on this idea, and I think they see the value in it, just from, again, just even the organizational standpoint, you know? I think every executive director has different charges and different duties. I think it becomes, you know, part of the personality. Again, I think, even my position in the year has evolved a little bit, but I think what the overall value is, that is marketable, is somebody to kind of herd all the cats right and understand what's going on — even if it's just scheduling meetings and scheduling agendas and kind of planning the conferences, taking that burden off the EAS or the county clerks is super beneficial.
So, I think the biggest challenge — coming back to your earlier question — is the funding source, right? How are we going to fund it? Is it going to be a full time gig? Is it going to be a part time gig? Originally, when this grant was kind of proposed, it was some brick and mortar and having an office and having somebody in place. I think in today's society, that's not necessarily necessary, and evident by, I think I've been successful commuting from North Carolina, you don't have to be in the same state. But, again, I think the need to have somebody just to, again, herd the cats and keep everything in line is super valuable. What I'm starting to realize in communicating with these different states is the different structures, right? We have clerks, tax assessors, EAs. California has, I think, about three different associations that all do a little bit of elections. So, trying to get them under one executive director would be challenging. North Carolina is pretty standard, as far as everybody's an elections director that's appointed, and it has a board, so I think it'll be a little bit easier, but their association, at this point, meets once every two years. It's not very effective in doing what needs to be done, and the effectiveness of it, especially when we start to get the lobbyists and kind of that cohesiveness and that one voice is super important, and I think, states are starting to see that.
Brianna Lennon: It is very interesting. There aren't, I think, very many people that live in one place and run elections in another or help people run elections in another with the decentralized nature of every state has different laws and your experiences. In running them in North Carolina — so, I assume teaching them you had to understand all of them — but what is that like living in both worlds?
Chris McGinn: Yeah. So, now I'm probably more knowledgeable about Texas election law than I am about North Carolina law, right? So, I was out of the practical North Carolina elections offices for 10 or 12 years, right? I still stayed involved at the national level with CERA and with the [indecipherable]. So, I think, my perspective, once I left Guilford County elections office, was more the national perspective. The way I see it from my job now, it's more running a nonprofit, right? Than running elections. I'm learning very quickly even the different interpretations within the counties, you know, somebody tells me that “This is the way we do it,” and I talk to somebody else, and “No, this is the way we do it.” So, that's even like trying to get a 30,000 foot view of how people are interpreting these things.
What I think, and I've joked about it, but I think what is super beneficial in my unique situation is that I'm really, I can't be impacted by the legislators right? County Clerks would get that, you know, that blowback if they oppose something, and EAs would have to be very conscious of the stances they're taking, right? As a nonprofit, representing the whole organization, I'm just the guy that's running the nonprofit, right? So, I could have opinions on certain things, and again, I'm not going to go against the view, issues of our board or our members, but it's easier for me to either be devil's advocate or speak on things from literally they’re not involved on a day-to-day level, right? From the best, I think, the best practices from an association's point of view because I don't have to worry about “x county, y county, this legislator, that legislator” because one of the, I think the biggest challenges from members, and what I've observed in my job, is — how do they separate being the current president of the association versus the exec or the election administrator of x county, right? Because you're always going to have your interest of your entire county, and those interests sometimes are diametrically opposed to one another, you know? So, they're really balancing that out.
What we made a real point [of] this year was that our legislative chair, Jennifer Doinoff who was the ex- president, she represented Hays County, but she was really, really great this legislative session of representing the views of the association as a whole, and some of those things went against her views, right? But she knew that, “Okay, this is the duty I'm doing.” So, I think that's the perspective of being removed from it — is you can really find the best interest for the association, as opposed to the particular county, you know? And I think that's the need, not that executive directors are operating as clerks currently, but again, they still have some allegiances to the counties they worked in and that type of thing.
Brianna Lennon: I know we were probably getting short on time, but you brought up the Secretary of State's office, which made me remember that I did want to ask you about what the association's relationship — how you've navigated that, as well, because it does seem to be a pretty two way street. There is a certificate — there's not certification, there's training and things like that come out of the office. As you've gotten into this role over the last year, have they adapted in any way to work with the association in different ways?
Chris McGinn: Yeah, I think that's what the realization has come to over the past year, right? The structure in Texas always was that the Secretary of State always hosted a summer convention, which we just left last week, to go over the new laws and new rules and new policies. They would send out advisories, and that was basically the extent of their kind of training. They have developed a training program with trainers to go out to individual counties.
With my role, over the past year, what they've realized is — especially with communication and messaging and kind of opinions — is now there's at least a formal structure where they can come to us and say, “Hey, we need this, that and the other thing.”
So, very relevant — 2753, which I speak on, they're establishing working groups for implementation at the state level under the Secretary of State's office. Well, they came to the association and said, “Hey, who would be good in this working group, identify the differences in voting equipment in precinct versus county?” All these different things, and took our recommendations to be on those working groups, right? So, I think, they realize the value, and again, we have a great working relationship with them because it's kind of, it's necessary. I think the one thing that our members need to start to understand a little bit is that they are in a partisan position, right? In Texas, it's unique — Secretary of State is appointed and then, obviously, the Elections Director is appointed under her currently, and that's partisan, right? So, they have a fine line to walk with regards to the implementation that we can take stronger stances than them, but understand that we are working together with them to do what's best to have successful elections in Texas.
Eric Fey: You've been listening to High Turnout Wide Margins, a podcast that explores local elections administration. I'm your host, Eric Fey alongside Brianna Lennon. A big thanks to KBIA and the Election Center for making this podcast possible. Our Managing Editor is Rebecca Smith. Managing Producer is Aaron Hay. Our Associate Producer is Katie Quinn, and our Digital Producer is Mark Johnson. This has been High Turnout Wide Margins. Thanks for listening.
