After 23 years of serving the people of Lubbock County, Roxzine Stinson, the county’s elections administrator, is retiring today.
Stinson has worked for Lubbock County since 2003, she was promoted to chief deputy administrator two year later, and took over as elections administrator in 2021.
She sat down with the KTTZ news team earlier this month to talk about her experience.
The following transcript has been edited lightly for clarity.
Brad Burt: This has been a really interesting year for an election administrator in Lubbock County, especially. Kind of talk about the year that you've seen.
Roxzine Stinson: Well, this year we've had some special elections. We started in November with constitutional amendments, and then in March we had the primaries for Democrat and Republican parties. From there, we went to the May 2 city and school elections, and it wasn't over and we were already delivering equipment for the primary runoffs, and both parties had runoffs in either statewide or local races. And then we had a school district that had a runoff from the May election that started right behind it, literally. And election day for it was June 13, and on Monday, June 15, early voting started for the City of Lubbock, a special election for City Council District 4. And on July 20, we start early voting for the runoff from this District 4 election.
Brad Burt: Any moments in particular that you think of over the last over the last 22 years?
Roxzine Stinson: When I started with Lubbock County, we were paper, just paper. And you brought- came in a metal ballot box, and we ran it through scanners to count the votes. In 2005, we started looking at going to vote centers and electronic equipment, and that's when we bought our first electronic equipment. And just the advancements, the technology, how it's changed over the years, I mean, it's just amazing to watch how things have changed and grown. It really is.
We started out in an office with five people, and we had metal boxes and paper in another building. We are now in a building that they took out part of the parking lot, basically, and built for us and currently, we're almost outgrowing it. It's just it hasn't stopped. It hasn't stopped, and I know there's a push to go back to paper, but it's not going to change the growth and the concept because this county's growing. We're at over 200,000 registered voters. When I started, we were nowhere near that. Our population's over 300,000. We were at about 168,000. So you look at the growth, and I mean that's amazing for this part of the country, and I love seeing it.
BB: I have said it many times. Elections are just my favorite thing to cover. You work with a lot of good people in Lubbock, not just in the city of Lubbock, but in the communities around as well.
RS: The county. Yeah. We do. We contract with every city and school within our county, and we have some voters that you know come by once in a while, and you know ‘I see you on TV,’ and I just I feel so honored and blessed that I’ve met them. And there are a few cranky people; they're out there, but that's okay. They're voicing their opinion, and you want them to, because if we were all the same… *laughs* Where would the fun be if we were all the same? It's good for us, and it keeps us on our toes. So I don't mind them asking questions. I really don't. I appreciate those.
BB: Absolutely. Your retirement has been in talks for…
RS: Almost a year. Yeah, almost a year. Last October, I turned in my notice.
BB: Have you had any thoughts over the last year, just watching everything play out?
RS: It's bittersweet. It really is. I'm gonna miss it. I'm nervous and excited all at the same time. My last day's July 31st. I'll be sitting in Austin before dark. I'm going to see family, and then I'm gonna come home and go see some more family, and my son lives in Utah. I want to see more of him. I want to travel. I want to go fishing. I am going to Utah. I'm going to go fishing. I am not moving, staying in this part of the area.
It was a struggle. I've talked about retiring for over two years, and I went on a trip with my sisters, who said, ‘Just make up your mind, make up your mind.’ And I said, ‘I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm trying,’ because it was hard. It's hard. I've watched so many changes over the years, but I'm at peace with it. I really am, and looking forward to it.
SL: What has the training process been like preparing everyone for you leaving?
RS: They have appointed a new elections administrator. His name's Troy Havard, and he's a really nice guy. He comes from Tarrant County, and he's got several years of election experience under his belt, and he'll be very good for Lubbock County. He really will. He'll be with me at least the last couple of weeks, so we can go over things, but other departments, we all work together: auditor, purchasing, everybody, and they will step in and help him as well for anything that I miss, because it's not something he can transition into, you know, just in a day or two, but everybody will work together to make sure our department continues to succeed.
BB: There were a couple spots this year where you were looking for election workers.
RS: Still are, still are. Just keep that out there: still are. This is a midterms. Every election's very important. Don't ever think it's not. People always talk about the Novembers being the most important, and sometimes the primaries. But also remember, your cities and schools are very important. They set your tax base. You need to realize that, and you need to vote and get out there and let your voice be heard about that. I mean, every election, I don't care how small or large, they're all important.
And I encourage everybody to volunteer. Don't just sit on the couch and complain to me. Come volunteer, and we pay. We pay for training. We pay for working. Get out there and be a part of that. You know, we appreciate it. So just call the office. We'll get you going. And you know, just keep the word out there. Ask your kids, your family, your neighbors, because 16 years of age and older, if they're in good stead with the school, they can work. College students need to come work. I mean, yes, it's an early day, but you know, just one day.
I've talked to some poli sci classes. When you go, ‘You have to be there at 5:45.’ The looks on some of their faces. *laughs* But you know some of them have showed up and stepped up and worked, and we're very grateful for that. And we've even had a couple of high school students come back after they graduate that are going to school at Tech and have continued to work the elections, and we appreciate that. We had one young lady; she kept telling me, ‘I want to be a judge.’’ She is a judge. After graduating high school and becoming 18 years of age, she stepped up, won election, and she's been amazing.
BB: Was there any elections that really stood out as something memorable?
RS: I don't remember the year, but the legislation had changed to where everybody had to pay a filing fee, including the Green, the Libertarian, everybody on the ballot. We had 8,500 mail ballots ready to go out in the envelopes, getting them recounted to make sure we had our numbers right and everything was accounted for to mail out. And a court came back and said we had to add those parties on without them paying the state a filing fee, so we had to stop, reprogram the election, retest the election, and reprint and reprocess mail ballots to go out.
And you know, one year, legislation changed some of the laws on the signage that had to be at the polling location. I kid you not. The Friday before early voting started, we were picking up our signs from the printer, and we spent the weekend getting them out. One year, Kinky Friedman was on the ballot, and he was on there as Kinky, and they came back and said he couldn't do that. They made him take Kinky off the ballot. We had to reprogram, and we already had delivered equipment for that one. So we're out over the weekend putting reprogramming equipment at the polling locations that we'd already delivered to. So you know, and those are things we remember. And you know, it's those memorable things.
Samantha Larned: I think a lot of the time, people in the county, in the city, what have you, think about elections as it's a day or it's just you know the week of early voting and then it's election day. But this is a year-round. This is a year-round thing.
RS: And like this November, even though they hadn't hired anyone to replace me at the time, I have still begun and am working on the processes for November, because the county has to call the election at their regular meeting August 10th. So I can't just leave it till he's able to come in or whoever they were hiring at the time.
Most elections will take about six months to get everything going because you've got certain postings you have to do and processes, and depending on the election, if the election board, which is myself, the two party chairs, and the county judge and the county sheriff, to determine the equipment and the supplies, and talk about ballot board and stuff for it, and then you have to take that before the court for approval. And then, if it's an election like November that the county calls, we have to make sure we do it in plenty of time to meet the deadlines. So while we're doing the primaries, I'm also working on May and also knowing if there's a primary runoff. This is what we've got to do, and I've already got notes for next May. You know, I've been talking to some of the cities and schools and know what they're looking at for next year and making sure that I leave notes for Troy, who's coming in behind me. So yeah, it's year-round.
BB: It's a good relationship with all kinds because the United, the supermarkets, you know, I always think whenever the early voting gets started, I'm like, ‘Okay, well, I'm gonna be in a United, so I can just, just hop right over there.’
RS: We do. We have some good partners. We've got to make sure everywhere we're at meets ADA requirements. And what doesn't? You'll see us out there with a sand bucket filling in sand and cracks sometimes. We take yellow duct tape, and we mark the ADA lanes for wheelchairs because not all parking lots have those. But voting ADA requirements are different than some of the building codes for ADA. And so we go out, and we work with our building or facilities, and we'll put it up, and then that night we'll pull it up and bring it in, and we put out temporary markings for that.
Texas Disability Rights has a lady that lives in Austin, and she has twice now, maybe three times, come and spent a week with us during the summer. We make every potential polling location, and she looks at it and she has a checklist, and it's about 21 pages if you take the full checklist, and she's got it narrowed down for what we can use. And we go out, and we take a level, the ramps they have to be a certain degree, and if they're over that, we can't use them.
I'm going to give you an instance, Roscoe Wilson [Elementary School]. The only place Roscoe Wilson has that has van accessible parking and the ramp meets the requirements, it's the cafeteria on the back side. We don't kick the kids out of the cafeteria. Now, if it's a Saturday election, we use them. We no longer use them for Tuesdays.
Our IT department helps us by troubleshooting on election day, and they actually help us do some of that, you know. And that's why I talk about the county working as a group and a team, and everybody helping one another. And they go out there, and if we have equipment problems, we've trained them on that. They can help us, so it keeps us where we need to be in the office.
Samantha Larned: You ever get phone calls of ‘I went to vote at the student union building and I got a parking ticket?’
RS: Yeah, I did one time. Cost me $20. Do not be sending those to my office. I did this as a one-time thing. If he hadn't been 80-something years old, I probably wouldn't have paid it. Sweet, sweet man.
And I'm gonna say, Tech has, in the last few years, has really stepped up with us over there for that. They have really gone out of their way to help us with that to make sure the students and folks have you know the space to vote over there. Because in a presidential – and students, please register to vote, so you don't vote provisional. We voted, one election, 1,750 provisional ballots over there, and that's students because they had not registered either in time or hadn't registered and were still registered in another county. But the law says we can't deny you the right to vote. We do not deny them that right to vote. They can vote that provisional, and then it does register them here, down the road. But we have one election, we had over 2,800 voters through Tech, and that was between provisional voters and regular voters on election day, and it has a good turnout over there.
BB: Voter turnout is probably not Lubbock County's, not always our proudest point.
RS: That's statewide.
BB: Yeah, no kidding, no kidding. The thing that doesn't get enough credit, in my opinion, is how the numbers have improved.
RS: They have. They've improved some. And the county still, the party split, we're still at about 65-35, party-wise, but the numbers are going up.
BB: The municipal elections this year were a little lower, but do you think that maybe just a level of frustration with all the elections people had to deal with…?
RS: Some of it is because we get a lot of phone calls about all the mail they're getting and all the ads on TV. I have no control over the ads on TV nor the mail. And I do not give them your phone numbers because we do not maintain your phone numbers if you put them on anything because by law we're not allowed to.
BB: You've talked a lot about just adapting to situations here, I imagine COVID was probably a unique experience for your office as well.
RS: It was, the governor called early voting for three weeks instead of two. We did have people get sick at the location. The county worked with and hired a company that went in and helped the Uniteds spray and clean and disinfect. We cleaned our equipment and stuff, and we were very fortunate, only had a couple of staff members get sick during that time.
We had folks that called that didn't want too much physical contact. We wore hazmat suits. *laughs* We wore hazmat suits for those. We just said ‘notify us.’ I had young men who were willing to wear hazmat suits to help those voters, and you know, do what they could to help make them comfortable with their voting. And so we did.
BB: Is there anything that you would like to tell the people of Lubbock County after your years of service?
RS: Mostly, I just want to thank folks. I mean it from my heart. I really want to thank people for their graciousness and their kindness over the years. Like I told you, I have felt truly blessed over the years. If you've been a cranky voter or not, I still appreciate hearing from you. That's helped keep me on my toes. And those of you, you know, I've had some folks come in and ‘You're the boss, and I'm getting to talk to you.’ Well, yes, yes, you know, and people I kind of act surprised when I answer the phone, but that's part of my job. It's not to sit in the office with the door shut and ignore folks. It's you know to be out there and be a part of that. And I need to know what goes on, and I like hearing from the voters. And I have really appreciated everything over the years from my voters, from the county itself, I really, and even from y'all, like I said, the media, I really appreciate everything y'all have done.
BB: Well, as a lifetime Lubbock County resident and a fan of elections in general, thank you.
RS: You’re welcome. I appreciate it. Thank y'all so much.