Bexar County Election Administrator Jacque Callanen announced her retirement on Friday, but she will oversee the contentious November presidential election before she leaves office.
At age 78 and after overseeing more than 300 elections in her 19 years as administrator, Callanen said it's time to step down. She has worked nearly three decades in the elections office in total.
The county elections commission accepted her January 2025 retirement plans and unanimously praised her election oversight through the years.
After the threats directed toward election workers locally during the 2020 matchup between Biden and Trump, Callanen said it would be her last presidential election.
But she said she decided to stick it out through one more tough election to give the county time for a national search to find a suitable replacement.
"It was uppermost, uppermost to be able to continue to give everyone the election they deserve,” Callanen said.
Those 2020 threats against local election workers were fueled by President Trump's false claims of a rigged national election.
She said similar threats have already started in connection with November's presidential election.
County Judge Peter Sakai, who also leads the county election commission, said the national search for Callanen's replacement will run concurrently with her final months in office and he promised a smooth transition to a new elections administrator.
"We'll be asking commissioner's court to proceed with a succession plan in order to do a national search, to pay for the resources necessary for that and so we will be looking for a successor during this period of time," Sakai said.
Callanen also helped administer elections through the COVID-19 pandemic. And she transitioned the county into "super" polling sites or a system where voters could vote at any polling site anywhere regardless of precinct.
But there were lawsuits against the county over her handling of some elections, something not uncommon nationally for elections administrators in the current election environment. She was criticized for reducing the number of physical polling sites to save the county money, saying the "super" polling sites would suffice.
Some voting rights organizations and volunteer deputized voter registrars claimed Callanen was unsupportive of their efforts. Some of the volunteer deputized voter registrars said they were fired by the election office for simple paperwork mistakes.
