By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
Chairs of the Val Verde County’s Republican and Democratic Parties were united today in their praise for how the Nov. 5 General Election was conducted.
Val Verde County Clerk Teresa Esther Chapoy, who was in charge of running the election, in turn, thanked her staff and the county workers who also assisted her.
Chapoy made some of her comments on the night of Election Day outside the county courthouse.
Before reading the results of early voting by personal appearance, Chapoy offered a prayer, then said, “First of all, I must thank God, Jehovah, and god of creation, everything that was, that is and that will be. Thank you, heavenly Father, for Your protection, Your wisdom and discernment, and for hearing our prayers and gracing us all with Your mercy. Thank you to my church, Templo Bethel, and all my brothers and sisters in Christ, who have been praying for us this entire election.
“We were only minimally sidelined with false alarms at the civic center and then the power outage. However, we had a plan in place and were ready for such an event. We were able to continue to work. Everyone jumped into action and kept the election going,” Chapoy said.
She added, “I want to thank all of the county employees who stepped up and helped my department, helped see us through this election. I would name them all individually, but I would hate to accidentally leave anyone out. You know who you are, so thank you, and I truly appreciate your help.”
Ten days after the election concluded, including the counting of outstanding ballots on Wednesday, both Republican Party Chair Sharon Pettit and Democratic Party Chair Rosa Hernandez agreed the election went well.
Pettit and Hernandez spoke to The 830 Times following the canvassing of the election by Val Verde County Commissioners Court today.
Pettit said, “I think it went really well. I focused myself on being present at the early voting ballot board every time they met because I know their work is critical, and so, from the time they started working on Oct. 2, I was present, as a poll watcher, at every single meeting.”
Asked how she felt about how the election was run, Pettit said she was pleased. She said she was also happy with the voter turnout, which, according to final records, was 48.79 percent.
“I’m absolutely pleased with it, just great. You know, we’d always like to have a lot more, but having almost 50 percent of registered voters is good, and I was really pleased with that,” she added.
Pettit said she believes candidates “need to concentrate more on getting people registered to vote.”
“From what I saw, that was kind of a problem, that people were coming in, and they weren’t registered to vote. I don’t know the number, percentage-wise, but we need to get people registered to vote, and then they have to understand there is a cut-off time. It takes 30 days for it to become effective, and some of them that happened to, waited until after Oct. 7 to try and get registered to vote,” Pettit said.
Hernandez said she was “very satisfied” with how the election was conducted.
“I think it was very excellent. I think it was very well organized. We had no problems. Everything was just so smooth, and everything was running so great. They did a great
job.”
Hernandez said she believed the voter turnout would be higher. “I thought it would be much more, but I think it was better than the last (election). But it was good,” Hernandez said.
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