Texas is about to hand control of elections in the second-largest state in the country to a 34-year-old megachurch pastor who has never run a polling place, never managed a voter registration database, and is on record saying it's 'not even debatable' that voting machines were 'screwed up' in 2020. This is happening months before a midterm election that could decide the balance of power in Congress. Everything is fine.
Meet Your New Election Boss, Texas
State Rep. Nate Schatzline is, by most indicators, the frontrunner to become Texas Secretary of State after the current officeholder, Jane Nelson, announced her resignation earlier this month. Nelson is expected to stay on until July 17. Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, gets to make the call, and his office has not announced anything officially. But as NPR reports, basically nobody in Texas election circles has heard another name floated.
Schatzline is a pastor at a Fort Worth megachurch, a conservative state lawmaker, and a man with documented ties to Christian nationalist circles. He is 34 years old. He has, per a detailed analysis report circulated by the Texas Association of County Election Officials, never run an election. Not one. Not a school board race. Not a local bond measure. Nothing.
What He Believes About Elections
Here is what Schatzline said last year in an interview with John Herold, who NPR describes as an election denial influencer who helped popularize a QAnon-adjacent conspiracy theory after 2020. Quote: 'It's not even debatable the amount of election fraud we had through mail-in ballots. It's not even debatable that the machines were screwed up and that we've seen unbelievable amounts of election fraud.'
This is the man potentially about to oversee elections in a state with more registered voters than any other except California, in a year when several of those races could flip control of the House. The claims he is repeating have been investigated, litigated, audited, and rejected in court after court after court. They are false. That hasn't slowed anyone down.
Schatzline is also a close ally of Ken Paxton, the Attorney General and current Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Texas. Schatzline voted against impeaching Paxton in 2023 when Paxton was, as NPR puts it, 'embroiled in scandal.' Paxton posted online in 2025 that he was 'proud to call [Schatzline] a friend.' These two are very much in each other's corners.
The People Who Actually Run Elections Are Worried
Chris McGinn is the executive director of the Texas Association of County Election Officials, the professional organization for the hundreds of local voting administrators across the state. He drafted an analysis report for his members specifically about what a Schatzline appointment would mean. It is not a warm document.
Previous secretaries of state, including Nelson, have been what McGinn calls institutionalists who 'prioritized stabilizing relationships with county officials, providing bipartisan-friendly training resources, and shielding local administrators from overt partisan warfare.' Schatzline, McGinn's report says, 'would represent a disruptor model of leadership: highly ideological, responsive to grassroots activist demands, and comfortable using the office as an active enforcement agency.'
The report goes on to warn that because Schatzline has never actually worked in election administration, the office could start issuing 'administrative directives that are logistically impossible or highly disruptive on the ground.' Which is a very professional way of saying: this could be a complete disaster for the people trying to actually run a functioning election.
The Timing Makes This Worse
It is highly unusual for a state's top election official to resign this close to a federal election. What makes it particularly interesting in Texas is that the legislature is already out of its regular session. That means whoever Abbott appoints serves in an acting capacity until next year, when the legislature reconvenes and votes on a permanent replacement.
Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas, told NPR what that actually means in practice: whoever gets appointed right now will do the most consequential work of the job before anyone gets a formal chance to evaluate whether they're qualified to do it. 'We don't get to see if this person is qualified to do the job and do an actual job interview until they've gotten to do the most single most important function of this job,' he said.
Gutierrez also noted this is not the first time Abbott has appointed a secretary of state in this particular fashion, which makes it feel less like an accident and more like a pattern.
Schatzline's Legislative Record on Elections Is... Recent
One data point worth sitting with: Schatzline authored zero election-related bills during his first session in the Texas House. Zero. Then, in the 2025-2026 session, he authored or co-authored at least five. That is a very fast pivot toward election policy for someone with no background in it, and it landed right around the time he appears to have positioned himself for this appointment.
NPR reached out to Schatzline for comment. He did not respond. Abbott's office did not answer questions about Schatzline either, saying only that 'an announcement on an appointment will be made at a later date.' So everyone who knows what's coming is staying quiet, and everyone who doesn't know is preparing for the worst.
The Dingo Take
Let's be clear about what is happening here. Texas, a state with competitive congressional races that could literally determine who controls the House of Representatives, is reportedly about to put a pastor who believes voting machines were 'screwed up' in charge of making sure those machines work. A man who has never administered an election is going to oversee one of the most consequential elections in recent American history. And he gets to do it with minimal legislative oversight because the timing of this appointment means accountability comes after the fact, if it comes at all.
This is not an accident. This is a strategy. You appoint a true believer, you give him a powerful office, you insulate him from scrutiny until after he's done the thing you appointed him to do. The Texas Association of County Election Officials is out here writing emergency briefings for its members. Common Cause is raising alarms. The actual professionals who run elections in Texas are, politely but clearly, scared. When the people whose job it is to make elections function start circulating analysis reports about the 'disruptor model' of incoming leadership, that is not a good sign.
Nate Schatzline did not respond to NPR's request for comment. Greg Abbott's office didn't either. That tells you everything. When you're proud of what you're doing, you say so. When you know how it looks, you wait until it's too late to stop it.
