With a margin of 4 votes and the provisional and overseas ballots not counted, I suspect it is too soon to even think about such things. They may still win, without disputing anything.
The returns on channel 16 (Grande cable) said that they were not included.
I just looked at the returns on the Hays County site and the lead is down to 3 votes. No mention of provisional or overseas ballots anywhere that I could find.
Should be down to 2 votes now, actually. The provisional ballots have not been included in the results as of now. Things are probably about to get interesting. From what I've heard, anyways.
Hopefully "interesting" does not mean uglier than it already is, but it probably does.
I thought the interesting thing was that we only had about 2600 voters for City Council. That's less than 5% turnout. It's also interesting that it appears we had 3800 people at the polls and 1200 of them (1/3) chose not to vote for City Council.
Meanwhile, Hays County had an overall turnout of almost 14% and if you remove San Marcos from the equation, the remainder of the county was closer to 20%, unless my math is wrong:
Hays county - 13,000 of 95,000 voters
San Marcos - 3800 of 40,000 voters +/- (based on 85% of population being over 18, plus the students living in town, which brings the total to more than 50,000 voters, I'm sure)
That leaves a little over 9,000 voting in the rest of the county, from a pool of 40,000-55,000.
Why so little turnout in such an educated city? Is it because the issues are not important to the people here? Maybe. Is it because the campaigns got so ugly that people were turned off? Maybe.
I just hope all of the candidates are taking note. Turnout this low is pretty sad. You need to engage the people. And that means people from all areas.
It's also interesting that it appears we had 3800 people at the polls and 1200 of them (1/3) chose not to vote for City Council.
The difference probably reflects that some of the provisional ballots were counted. There are three reasons to vote a provisional ballot. The first is you are registered somewhere else and not here, and part of the ballot you would be eligible to vote on in the precinct of your residence, such as the constitutional amendments. The other is you are registered here but did not appear on the role of registered voters due to some clerical error and don't have your voter registration card. The third is you voted at the wrong precinct without your voter registration card.
Those that voted an early provisional ballot for reason one are easy enough to confirm electronically. They are probably a lot of the difference between total voters and those voting in the city council election. I wish they had had that provision of HAVA back when I was a student and not yet a permenant resident (or even the current early voting system).
The margin is currently 3 votes. There were no provisional ballots filed as of 10 PM last night according to Ms. Cowan. They had not counted officially overseas ballots.
Hopefully "interesting" does not mean uglier than it already is, but it probably does.
I thought the interesting thing was that we only had about 2600 voters for City Council. That's less than 5% turnout. It's also interesting that it appears we had 3800 people at the polls and 1200 of them (1/3) chose not to vote for City Council.
Meanwhile, Hays County had an overall turnout of almost 14% and if you remove San Marcos from the equation, the remainder of the county was closer to 20%, unless my math is wrong:
Hays county - 13,000 of 95,000 voters
San Marcos - 3800 of 40,000 voters +/- (based on 85% of population being over 18, plus the students living in town, which brings the total to more than 50,000 voters, I'm sure)
That leaves a little over 9,000 voting in the rest of the county, from a pool of 40,000-55,000.
Why so little turnout in such an educated city? Is it because the issues are not important to the people here? Maybe. Is it because the campaigns got so ugly that people were turned off? Maybe.
I just hope all of the candidates are taking note. Turnout this low is pretty sad. You need to engage the people. And that means people from all areas.
Actually if you go back and look at city elections before the 2005 city council race they were usually lower turnout then this race had.
Actually if you go back and look at city elections before the 2005 city council race they were usually lower turnout then this race had.
That doesn't mean that it shouldn't be a lot higher. It was elsewhere in the county.
I'd also question whether 1200 people out of 3800 (or anything close) were excluded from City Council votes because of provisional ballots, as at least 2 of the 3 reasons cited (clerical errors and voting in the wrong precinct, unless they are Wimberley residents voting in San Marcos, or something) would not exclude one from voting on Council.
3800 people (still too low) were interested enough to turn out to vote, but did not vote for City Council candidates. If I were a candidate, I'd see a problem there. The election was split 50/50, so one might make a case that either candidate could have captured 500-600 of the 1200 that did not vote, making this a very different election for either one.
Perhaps there were a lot of provisional ballots skewing the numbers, but it seems unlikely. Even if there were a lot of provisional ballots for people voting here because they could not get home in time, that only means that the turnout in San Marcos was even lower.
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