Tarrant County has three finalists for elections chief. One sued the former administrator.

A Fort Worth woman who once sued the outgoing Tarrant County elections administrator is a finalist for his position, according to a source with firsthand knowledge of the interviews.

According to court records, Karen Wiseman’s case against the county and outgoing administrator Heider Garcia closed May 9 — the same day interviews for the elections administrator job began.

An expert says Wiseman’s consideration for the position is “rare” for a job where non-partisanship is supposed to be the standard.

The two other finalists for the elections chief job are Clinton Ludwig, chief deputy of the county clerk’s office, and Fred Crosley, who was the chief financial officer for Trinity Metro, according to the same source.

Wiseman filed a lawsuit against Tarrant County after she had put in a public information request for data on the 2021 mayoral and city council races in Fort Worth.

She claimed the elections office did not take measures to preserve information beyond what was required in state election code, according to Tarrant County court records. Wiseman also claimed the county had denied other requests she had filed for information on elections.

Wiseman also left a letter in one Fort Worth voter’s mailbox ahead of the midterm elections last November inquiring whether the voter had voted at a Stop Six location.

In the letter, Wiseman said she was working with a group that was investigating the integrity of local elections and had noticed “anomalies” in the data. She did not identify which group she was with.

“There are an unusually high number of people that live in our neighborhood, traveling to the Stop 6 area to vote when there are many Early Voting sites between here and there,” Wiseman wrote.

Tarrant is one of 90 Texas counties that participate in countywide voting. Registered voters can cast their ballot at any vote center in the county.

Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston, said that the goal of an elections administrator is to not only run elections but to also make sure constituents know they’re being run fairly.

“Actions taken that make that role seem more partisan would potentially make voters think that the whole process is partisan,” Rottinghaus said. “That’s counterproductive in these arrangements.”

Usually, partisan candidates are weeded out in the process of selecting finalists for a job like this, Rottinghaus said.

The county’s election commission is in charge of hiring the new elections administrator. The commission includes county judge Tim O’Hare, Tarrant GOP chair Rick Barnes, outgoing Tarrant County Democratic Party chair Allison Campolo, county clerk Mary Louise Nicholson and tax assessor-collector Wendy Burgess.

Campolo wrote in a text to a Star-Telegram reporter that she would be respecting the confidentiality of the process and that more information will be available after final interviews.

Barnes declined to comment on the finalists in a text to a reporter, writing the commission was in the middle of the hiring process. Nicholson, too, wrote in an email that she did not feel it would be fair to comment since the hiring process was ongoing.

A representative for O’Hare wrote in an email that he would not be back in his office for the rest of the day. Burgess did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Nine applicants for election administrator were interviewed Friday by the election commission. The finalists will be interviewed sometime within the next week.

The Star-Telegram requested all application materials for every person who applied to be Tarrant County’s elections administrator. The county declined to provide the public documents and informed the Star-Telegram on Monday it would seek an opinion from the Texas Attorney General’s office.

Wiseman, who previously worked with First American Payment Systems for nearly 20 years, is president of the 5 Stones Foundation, a group focused on anti-human trafficking efforts in Tarrant County. The group has a volunteer taskforce with the Fort Worth Police Department.

Neither Wiseman nor Ludwig returned phone calls for comment Tuesday afternoon.

When reached Tuesday by phone, Crosley said he did not know if he was a finalist for the job but confirmed he did apply for the position. He did not answer a question about why he applied for the job and hung up on a Star-Telegram reporter.

Former administrator resigns

Garcia resigned from his position in a letter dated April 16 that cited differences between himself and O’Hare on how to run elections.

He wrote that his “formula to ‘administer a quality transparent election’ stands on respect and zero politics” was different from O’Hare’s and that he would not compromise on his values.

One commissioner accused O’Hare of breaking the county’s election system.

Garcia’s resignation, in addition to Republican leaders’ efforts to investigate local elections through the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office’s election integrity task force, led top Democratic officials in the county to pen a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice asking for an investigation. The letter, led by U.S. Rep Marc Veasey, claims such efforts undermine minority voters.

Officials with the Justice Department have since committed to meet with Tarrant County’s top Democratic officials. A meeting date had not yet been set.

O’Hare has said he would not rule out hiring someone for the position who ever questioned the results of the 2020 presidential election.