Bulletproofing county clerk office won’t start until after contentious election

The Sierra County Clerk’s office will get bulletproof doors and windows, but not in time for the next election.

County commissioners recently accepted a $10,000 grant from the Institute for Responsive Government for election security. The idea for using it to buy and install bulletproof doors and windows on the county clerk’s office on Date Street came from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

 County clerks and their staff from six southern New Mexico counties recently attended an election-security seminar in Silver City by Homeland Security’s contractor, the Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center. E-ISAC, created to monitor threats to the electric grid in 1999, recently has been charged with “the evolving threat landscape during the 2024 U.S. election cycle,” says its website. 

But County Clerk Shelly Trujillo said she doesn’t expect to have bulletproof doors or windows installed until after the contentious Nov. 5 election. The county has until May 31, 2025 to spend the grant.

Trujillo told the commissioners on Sept. 17 that she and her staff were unnerved at what they learned at the E-ISAC seminar about the potential for violent attacks during elections and the counting of votes at county clerk offices. Later, in a telephone interview, she said she, like most small-town residents, had never feared election violence before, but today “anything can happen.” Some county clerk offices already have bulletproof windows and doors, Trujillo said, so she wants the same safety measures for the local office.

The Institute for Responsive Government is a “left-leaning nonprofit that advocates for `pro-voter policies’” according to Politico. In 2023, the institute gave New Mexico, Michigan and Minnesota its highest marks for implementing policies like automatic voter registration, re-enfranchisement of felons and expanding early voting. 

A Sept. 3 letter from the institute’s executor director to Sierra County Commission Chair Travis Day did not mention bulletproofing, but said the funds must be used for “key human, physical, and technological assets that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has identified as necessary to conduct elections.”