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Collin County appoints new elections administrator

A resident speaks to a committee in charge of hiring a new elections administrator Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025, in McKinney.
Yfat Yossifor
/
KERA
Collin County's new elections administrator will lead a department that has been praised for its thoroughness and efficiency.

The Collin County election commission appointed Kaleb Breaux as the new county elections administrator. In that role, he will take on a department that has been lauded for its efficiency — but it’s also plagued by accusations of election fraud.

Breaux served as deputy elections administrator under Bruce Sherbet, who retired late last year.

The election commission heard from several Collin County elections workers who urged them to appoint Breaux during public comments before the board interviewed the candidates for the position. K.C. McClain, a Collin County election judge, said Breaux is well equipped to maintain Sherbet’s legacy.

“He would continue the standards that have been set and serve us well,” McClain said.

Collin County has received high praise for its election systems. The Texas Secretary of State’s Office County “the model of how to run elections in Texas” in its audit of the 2020 general election.

Election fraud claims about the 2020 election have repeatedly been discredited. But members of the Collin County chapter of Citizens Defending Freedom, many of whom are also active in the local Republican Party, have spoken about election integrity concerns at Collin County commissioners’ court meetings for years. Many have urged the county to make the switch from voting machines to hand-marked and hand-counted paper ballots.

County Judge Chris Hill proposed using hand-marked and machine-counted ballots for the November election last summer. But his proposal failed to pass after the other commissioners expressed concern about the time and cost the switch would require. County staff estimated it would cost the county between $3.3 million to $4.2 million and take at least a year to implement. The commissioners directed staff to look into using paper ballots in the future, including a potential bond election to let the voters decide on the issue.

The concerns about election integrity has also led to an increase in voter registration challenges. A small number of Collin County residents volunteering with a conservative nonprofit called True the Vote, filed thousands of voter registration challenges leading up to the November election. True the Vote is a conservative nonprofit based in Houston that has peddled what many describe as baseless theories about election fraud.

In Texas, registered voters can challenge voter registrations in the same county. And they're using online tools that compare voter rolls to other public records, to make thousands of challenges at a time. Breaux told KERA in a previous interview that Collin County received about 13,000 challenges ahead of the November election.

Breaux said the county elections department is just as concerned about maintaining election security and integrity as the people filing the voter registration challenges.

“I think deep down, we all have a concern that things are done right,” he said.

Got a tip? Email Caroline Love at clove@kera.org.

Caroline Love is a Report For America corps member for KERA News.

KERA News is made possible through the generosity of our members. If you find this reporting valuable, consider making a tax-deductible gift today. Thank you.

Caroline Love covers Collin County for KERA and is a member of the Report for America corps. Previously, Caroline covered daily news at Houston Public Media. She has a master's degree from Northwestern University with an emphasis on investigative social justice journalism. During grad school, she reported three feature stories for KERA. She also has a bachelor's degree in journalism from Texas Christian University and interned with KERA's Think in 2019.