Tarrant County election official leaving, heading back to Denton

Frank Phillips will be leaving his post as Tarrant County’s top elections official next month.

As this year’s fiercely contested presidential election wraps up, Phillips, who has served as Tarrant County’s elections administrator since 2014, has agreed to return to Denton County as the elections administrator — the same post he held before working here.

“I still live in Denton County and I worked 18 years in Denton County,” Phillips, 51, said Friday. “After this past election, they offered me the job to return. I was happy to accept it.

“I’m happy to come home.”

Phillips will stay here until Dec. 6 and start working in Denton the next day.

Local election officials plan to meet soon to start the process of finding a replacement.

The five-member Tarrant County Elections Commission — made up of Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley, Tax Assessor-Collector Ron Wright, County Clerk Mary Louise Garcia and the chairs of the county’s Republican and Democratic parties — will interview candidates and ultimately choose the next elections administrator.

“The election is over and there won’t be another election until the spring,” Wright said. “This is probably as good a time as any for this to happen, since it’s after the election for the year.

“I wish Frank all the best,” he said. “He’s going back to something he knows and is very comfortable with. I think the climate in Tarrant County was not to his expectations.”

Election challenges

Phillips will face challenges when he returns to Denton County.

There, on Election Day, several scanning machines were left in “test mode,” which means they wouldn’t accept or count paper ballots. Some of those ballots weren’t counted, but instead were combined with ballots that were counted. A judge signed off on the county’s request to recount the ballots to have accurate election results.

The new elections administrator for Tarrant County will face challenges here as well, as allegations of voter fraud in Tarrant County are under investigation by the state.

The complaints focus on mail-in ballots, which allow people to vote from their homes without any ID or verification of identity. At issue is how often people assist others — or physically help by witnessing — with filling out applications for mail-in ballots or the ballots themselves.

Local officials say workers with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office have been in Tarrant County gathering paperwork and interviewing potential witnesses. The attorney general’s office declined to “confirm or deny investigations” or comment on the situation.

When asked for the complaints that started the local investigation, attorney general’s workers declined to release them, expressing concern that doing so might hamper a criminal investigation.

Moving on

Phillips, from Louisiana, began college at Louisiana State University and graduated from Texas Woman’s University with a bachelor degree in 1999.

A longtime employee of Denton County, Phillips held a variety of posts there before becoming a certified elections/registration administrator in 2008 and Denton County Elections Administrator in December 2009.

He left that post in 2014 to replace Steve Raborn, the former elections administrator in Tarrant County.

As he heads back to his home county’s election office, he said he will miss the “exceptional” election staff in Tarrant County.

“I learned a lot from Tarrant,” Phillips said. “There’s a lot of organization and processes in place in Tarrant that make it run exceptionally well.

“I look forward to bringing some of those processes back to Denton.”

This story was originally published November 25, 2016 at 11:59 AM with the headline "Tarrant County election official leaving, heading back to Denton."