Democratic chair voted to keep elections administrator

The County’s election administrator has resigned from his job.

Javier Chacon announced Wednesday he was leaving effective the end of the year. The news came as a surprise to a lot of El Pasoans.

Since ABC-7 learned of the news, it has been trying to figure out why Chacon is leaving. Chacon had no comment.

But the chairman for the Democratic party in El Paso, Glen “Butch” Maya, did say Chacon did not want to resign.

Maya told ABC-7 the El Paso Democratic party did not have any issues with Chacon.

“Javier did not want to quit,” Maya said. “Some stuff was discussed behind closed doors.”

While others cited privacy laws in not commenting, Maya did comment about the sudden resignation of Chacon, a more than 30-year County employee, who served as the County elections administrator for the past seven years.

“It’s tough to comment on something that happened in executive session,” Maya said. “I’ll tell you, I voted to keep (Chacon). I was the single vote that said he did his job.”

County Judge Veronica Escobar declined comment as did El Paso Republican party chairman Tom Holmsley, both of whom are also on the commission.

“I certainly was not expecting this,” said Bob Pena, elections administrator for the Republican party in El Paso.

However, Pena admitted raising election issues in the past, including possible nepotism among election judges and the appointing of an election judge for the Democratic party who was just 19 years old and had never voted before.

“We would talk about them and (Chacon) would make his efforts to rectify them and he did,” said Pena, who indicated he was satisfied with Chacon’s job performance. “Everything has always been ship-shape as far as we’ve been able to discern,” Pena said. “We do we monitor the seal numbers, we check the ballot bags when they’re closed and everything is on the up and up. So, like I say, I’m a little surprised.”

Maya said Chacon may have had communication problems.

“(Chacon) wasn’t the most personable person,” Maya said. “He dealt with the people he had to deal with and he did his job in accordance with state law.”