AUSTIN, Texas — Texas Secretary of State John Scott, the state’s top election official, will resign at the end of the year.
On Monday, Scott sent a letter of resignation to Gov. Greg Abbott saying his last day will be Dec. 31, according to a copy obtained by The Dallas Morning News.
In the letter, Scott said he believes he has restored faith in Texas elections and that his overseeing the creation of a forensic election audit team allows him to leave the office with a sense of pride.
“With a successful 2022 General Election in the rear view mirror, and the final findings of the 2020 forensic audit soon to be released, I write to inform you that I intend to return to private practice at the beginning of the New Year,” Scott wrote.
Scott, an attorney who worked under Abbott while he was attorney general, was a controversial appointee by Abbott because of his connection to an effort to overturn 2020 presidential election results in Pennsylvania.
In Texas, the secretary of state is appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Texas Senate. Abbott appointed Scott after the 2021 legislative session, so he never underwent the confirmation process.
The office oversees elections as well as required paperwork filings for Texas businesses. Scott also acted as a diplomat of sorts for the state as its “chief international protocol officer.” His one-year tenure — Abbott appointed Scott on Oct. 21, 2021 — included negotiating with the four Mexican states that border Texas in a border spat that began when Abbott ordered all inbound tractor trailers to undergo a cumbersome inspection process.
But Scott’s chief task was implementing a controversial election law the Legislature passed in 2021 in response to false claims of widespread voter fraud stoked by former President Donald Trump.
It was not a perfect process. During spring party primaries, Texas saw the mail-in ballots rejected at astronomical rates amid confusion over new ID requirements. That was made worse by widespread fear at local elections offices that even providing a modicum of guidance on mail-in ballots would result in officials being jailed.
Rejection numbers improved greatly for November’s election, but still remain far higher than they were prior to the implementation of the election overhaul bill Senate Bill 1.
Scott found himself trying to thread the needle between defending the elections his office oversaw while keeping in good graces with far-right Republicans who promote false election integrity narratives that undermine democracy.
Scott saw angered activists during routine voter equipment testing at a September event in Hays County, in which he was shouted down by conspiracy theorists. He also fended off pressure from Waco Republican Congressman Pete Sessions to investigate Dallas County’s election office.
Scott called some election deniers “nuts” in an October interview with Texas Monthly in which he said that Joe Biden “absolutely” won the election. But he also demurred when asked about reporting that he praised the movie "2000 Mules," a debunked documentary that was the focus of screenings hosted by many top officials, including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.
Scott’s departure comes as Texas has not seen a secretary of state confirmed by the Legislature in five years. The office has faced greater scrutiny from lawmakers after an effort led by former secretary of state David Whitley in 2019 to purge noncitizens from the voter rolls, a move opponents said would effectively disenfranchised more than 100,000 voters that revealed flawed information targeting naturalized citizens and landed Texas in federal court.
Lawmakers refused to confirm Whitley as well. His successor, Ruth R. Hughs, stayed out of the political limelight but resigned at the end of 2021′s legislative session after lawmakers never confirmed her.
Abbott’s office did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. It is unclear when he will appoint a replacement.
Abbott appointed Scott six months after Hughs left. Scott faced immediate pushback from Democrats for his association with Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Scott and state Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, briefly represented the Trump campaign in its legal battle to stop Pennsylvania from certifying its election results.
He also assumed the control of a forensic audit of the 2020 election investigating results in Collin, Dallas, Harris and Tarrant counties, a probe initiated after Trump called on Abbott to investigate results in Texas, despite winning the state by nearly 5%. An initial report quietly released last New Year’s Eve said nothing fishy had been found.
The end of a second phase of the probe is expected before the end of the year. As that investigation continued, Scott created a forensic audit division within his office headed by the former head of election law at the conservative lobby group and think tank the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
Throughout his time as secretary of state, Scott continued to work closely with local election officials, and the continued politicization of those offices and the threats they faced leading up to the 2022 midterms, led Scott to come to defend them.
In his resignation letter, Scott said he “gained a deep appreciation for the difficult, meticulous, and often thankless work of local election officials in safeguarding the integrity of the ballot box.”
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