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- A GOP Texas elections official says she was forced to step down after "fierce attacks" following the 2020 election.
- "I apparently was not Republican enough," Michele Carew wrote in a column published in The Washington Post.
- Carew, an elections administrator in Hood County, TX, resigned from her post effective November 12.
A GOP Texas elections official who recently decided to resign from her post says she was forced out of her job as a result of "fierce attacks" following the 2020 election as Trump loyalists spread misinformation about election fraud in a county he overwhelmingly won.
Michele Carew, an elections administrator in Hood County, TX, wrote in a column published in The Washington Post Monday that in the months after the 2020 election "my administration of that election came under fierce attacks from partisan activists, in meetings and online."
"Though it was my duty as election administrator to be nonpartisan, that was characterized as a flaw," wrote Carew, whose resignation takes effect next week on November 12.
Carew explained that at a Hood County Commissioners Court meeting on May 11, one commissioner said, "Nonpartisan in this county means Democrat."
"I was denounced on several episodes of a local conservative Facebook and YouTube program," said Carew. "In July, the election commission held a meeting in which six agenda items targeted me with disinformation and unfounded claims."
She continued, "The only concrete issue involved the numbering of election ballots - an obscure disagreement in which I have not violated any law or principle. One outraged commission member called the meeting a "witch hunt."
Carew said she had voted as a Republican for over a decade, but that "in the 'stop the steal' frenzy that followed the November elections, I apparently was not Republican enough."
Carew said the "ongoing attacks" are what forced her "to resign from a job I have loved."
"It should have never come to this," Carew wrote.
She added that her office followed "best practices" and "ran a clean and accurate election" in which 81 percent of the Republican county voted to re-elect former commander-in-chief Donald Trump as president.
"When I was hired by Hood County last September, an elections inspector from the Texas secretary of state's office was assigned to oversee my work, and in a report filed after the elections, she affirmed I had done everything by the book," Carew said.
Carew wrote that she hopes that what she went through "is a wake-up call to voters and those political leaders who care deeply about election integrity."
"The 2020 election was a year ago, but we are still reeling from the lies and conspiracy theories that put public servants such as me on the chopping block," she said. "Demanding partisan loyalty from those who run our elections threatens our democracy."