He deserves zero benefit of the doubt.
Texas’ new secretary of state says he wants to “restore confidence” in the state’s elections, despite a background that includes helping former President Donald Trump challenge the 2020 presidential election results in Pennsylvania.
In an interview Thursday, John Scott said there’s no question that Joe Biden is the president and he has “not seen anything” to suggest the election was stolen, as Trump has falsely claimed. There has been no evidence of widespread voter fraud last year in Texas or nationwide.
But Scott stopped short of agreeing with a deputy under his predecessor who called the 2020 election in Texas “smooth and secure.” He did not want to get ahead of an election audit of four of Texas’ largest counties, which he called his top priority.
Scott said he got involved in the Trump election lawsuit because it centered on an “intriguing” legal issue — and that he bowed out days later because a federal appeals court ruling “killed” the case.
As for why Texans should trust him, Scott said he hopes they will give him a chance.
“I think proof’s in the pudding ultimately,” Scott said, speaking inside the secretary of state’s office at the Texas Capitol in Austin. “I think [Texans] should hope for somebody that only follows evidence and that is able to restore confidence amongst all voters.”
[…]
In declining to label the Texas election as “smooth and secure,” Scott said he was withholding judgment due to the audit.
“I don’t want to color our audit or the folks who are doing the audit, and make them think, ‘Well, the new secretary thinks we’ve gotta go find some fraud’ or ‘The new secretary thinks we can’t find fraud,’” Scott said. “I want them to look at the evidence or the facts and determine whether there was any evidence of that, and that’s really it.”
See here for the background, and read the rest because there’s a lot to it. To be as fair as I can be to someone who hasn’t earned any goodwill, he didn’t come off too badly, but he missed several easy opportunities to build a bridge and try to establish some level of rapport. He’s also a total novice at the elections management business, as he admits in the story, yet another reason to not have any faith in his selection. I don’t have any better way of putting it: He deserves no benefit of the doubt. The impetus is entirely on him to prove that he’s not a partisan hack who will gladly carry out Greg Abbott’s fondest wishes to put a thumb on the scale for Republicans going forward. The fact that he wasn’t actively twirling his mustache while tying Nell Fenwick to a railroad track as he was doing the interview is the lowest possible bar he could clear. He has a million miles to go from there.