By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
Val Verde County Commissioners Court members Tuesday canvassed and accepted the results of the May 7 joint election and discussed several issues that surfaced during the voting process.
County Clerk Generosa “Janie” Ramon presented a summary of the election results to the court, noting the court is only responsible for canvassing the votes cast for the two state propositions and that the individual governing entities, such as the city, school district and hospital board, are responsible for canvassing the results of their elections.
“What percentage of turnout did we have?” County Commissioner Pct. 3 Beau Nettleton asked Ramon, who served as the administrator for the joint election.
Ramon noted 2,932 voters cast ballots in the election, out of a total of 28,973 registered in the county. The overall turnout countywide was just over 10 percent, but not all of those voters cast ballots in all of the elections.
“I also wanted to let the court know that the mail (ballot) participation was 314, and we had 280 returned, that actually participated. Some of those were rejected again, for the envelope problem. We think we may have a better solution, and we’ll find out from this batch that we just sent out,” Ramon said.
“We’re currently having a joint primary runoff, and today (Tuesday), we’re in the second day of early voting, and that is for the state offices for the Democratic and Republican parties. That’s going on at the civic center right now through Friday,” she added.
She said her staff created an actual photo of the envelope, with arrows pointing exactly where it must be filled out.
“We’re hoping that works,” she said.
County Judge Lewis G. Owens Jr. reminded Ramon that during the court’s first meeting in June, members will discuss “issues that we had” during the election.
“We had a lot of issues come up, and some of that had to do with redistricting and the effects that redistricting had on some of the polling locations, voters, different situations. I was able to prevent some of those issues. I had to get special permission from the Secretary of State to make those corrections, only because I do not have the authority to change voter registration records. That has to come from another department,” Ramon said.
In one case, she said, once one voter complained about a situation, she “looked into the area where he lived and was able to identify people that had not come to vote yet, and I was able to correct those before they came to vote.”
“What problem are we talking about?” County Commissioner Pct. 4 Gustavo “Gus” Flores asked.
“Their precinct was identified incorrectly, and when you identify it incorrectly, you don’t get all the people that you should be voting for on your ballot, because we follow the instructions of the voter registration office when trying to determine which ballot style is created for that particular voter,” Ramon said.
“When you don’t identify the correct precinct for that person, they wind up not having the correct ballot and people on the ballot,” she added.
“I’ve asked Ms. Ramon to identify situations that we had and try to get past this (primary runoff) election and probably the first commissioners court meeting in June we’ll come back with that so everyone can ask questions and sort through some of the concerns,” Owens said.
The court voted unanimously to accept the results of the election as presented by Ramon.
After the vote, Ramon added a final cautionary note. She told the commissioners, “You need to remember that the city does not have the same precincts as the county and the school (district) and the hospital, and that is a big issue when we’re dealing with these kinds of problems.”
“I thought we were going to fix that during redistricting?” Nettleton asked.
“They (the city) had to do their own, and evidently it was not addressed,” Ramon replied.
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