A @WilcoElections supervisor and judge has resigned following an incident in which she was caught on camera screaming at a confused voter. A woman who recorded the video was shocked at the judge’s behavior — and so was her boss. https://t.co/fKYKHHkaTC @KVUE pic.twitter.com/j3v25VooFe
— Pattrik Perez (@PattrikPerez) November 6, 2018
An election judge and supervisor in Texas resigned after she was caught on camera screaming at a black voter who had asked her where to vote.
The incident occurred last Friday at the Williamson County Annex in the City of Round Rock just outside of Austin. In the video, now-former poll worker Lila Guzman can be seen and heard shouting at the voter and telling her to exit the polling station over her question.
“Get out! Get out! Get out! You are rude,” she screamed. “You are not following the law. Go. Go!”
Another voter at the annex captured the end of the shocking exchange on their cell phone while waiting in line during early voting. In comments to local ABC affiliate KVUE, the voter noted their thoughts while filming the interaction:
As soon as she started getting louder, I was like, “This is getting out of hand.” So I began to record. She did tell her she couldn’t vote there, but she didn’t say where in Travis. The lady did have an accent. She could’ve been new to the country. I don’t know, but she needed some help.
Williamson County Elections Administrator Chris Davis said he thinks the voter showed up in Round Rock after being turned away by poll workers in adjacent Travis County–which comprises most of Austin. As it turns out, the voter was registered to vote in Williamson County but lived in Travis County. Under Texas election laws, she should have been allowed to vote where she lived.
“I regret that that incident happened with that poll worker because that voter was just trying to get answers that weren’t being provided to her in a way that we train our poll workers to give,” Davis told the outlet.
Guzman later offered her own assessment of the incident–after resigning her post.
“It was the end of the day, and we were seeing steady turnout across all sites, but again, no excuse,” she told KVUE. “It’s our job to get voters answers and help them vote, either at our site or the site where they need to vote.”
Guzman, of course, will not be working on Election Day. She says, however, that she didn’t quit because of the video itself. Rather, Guzman insists, she didn’t think Davis’ office had her back after she called police to remove the confused voter from the building.
Davis also offered his agency’s apologetic thoughts on the matter. He said:
Our supervisor loses her composure in the middle of this, and that’s not something that we ever train our poll workers, supervisors, election judges and clerks to do. We always train them and advise them to maintain control of the situation politely and answer voters’ questions and give voters options so situations like these don’t escalate.
[image via screengrab]
Follow Colin Kalmbacher on Twitter: @colinkalmbacher
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