By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
Val Verde County Clerk Generosa “Janie” Ramon says she won’t concede until all of the ballots in the 2022 General Election have been counted.
“I am not conceding at this point,” Ramon told the 830 Times in an interview Thursday.
As the unofficial results of the election stood Thursday morning, Ramon, the Democratic Party nominee for re-election to the county clerk position, is trailing her challenger, Republican Party nominee Teresa Esther Chapoy, by 133 votes.
In the most recent unofficial totals released by the county clerk’s office, Chapoy had garnered a total of 4,673 votes of the 9,213 total votes cast in the election. Ramon had an unofficial total of 4,540 votes.
Chapoy’s current total votes give her 50.72 percent of the total votes cast, while Ramon’s votes give her 49.27 percent of the total votes cast.
Ramon said Thursday her office is still waiting for several hundred ballots to be returned.
“So you have to remember, we still have ballots to come back from the original mail-out. We have ballots that the early voting ballot board determined are missing ID. These people get six to seven days to cure that problem. If they cure it, we process the ballot,” Ramon said.
Ramon said the early voting ballot board, which consists of a judge, alternate judge and one member, examine the mail-in ballots and check whether or not the voter included the proper identification required for the ballot to be counted.
“They (early voting ballot board members) don’t open the ballot. They just tell us, ‘It’s missing an ID.’ Then we have to contact the voter and ask them to come in and take care of it. If they do come in and take care if it, that ballot goes back to the early voting ballot board, and they process that ballot so it can be counted,” Ramon explained.
“We cannot count any ballot until the board tells us it is good to go,” she added.
Ramon said she “would rather not give an exact number” of the total ballots still outstanding as of Thursday morning, but added, “We’re looking at over 200.”
Ramon said a total of 675 ballots were mailed out for the 2022 General Election.
“Now, they may not all come back. We mail out a lot of ballots and not all of them come back,” she said.
Ramon said about 540 mail-in ballots have been returned, but reiterated that not all of the ballots returned have been counted.
“The early voting ballot board still needs to process them and make the decision whether or not that ballot will be counted,” she said.
Ramon also pointed out that military voters have until Nov. 14 or 15 to return their ballots to the county clerk’s office.
“They get additional time that nobody else gets to return their ballots,” she said.
In addition, Ramon said, there are provisional ballots that were taken during the early voting period and on Election Day that have gone to the voter registrar’s office.
“And if the voter registrar’s office recommends that those ballots be accepted, then the early voting ballot board has to go back and look at those,” Ramon said.
She explained a provisional ballot is one given to a voter who presents him- or herself at a polling location or during early voting, and there is a question as to whether or not they are registered to vote in the county, whether or not their address is correct or whether or not they are on the list of voters registered to vote in the election.
“Some of them have proof that they’re registered; for example, they’ll have their voter registration card, but for some reason, they don’t appear on the list. We cannot reject the voter. The voter has the option to vote provisionally. Then the voter registrar gets time to review that information and check their records to make sure that person is registered or not registered,” Ramon said.
Ramon said she expects all of the ballots that can be counted will be counted by the time of the official canvass of the ballots by Val Verde County Commissioners Court during its regular term meeting on Nov. 22.
Until the last ballot that can be counted is counted, Ramon said she wouldn’t concede.
“I don’t concede. I worked too hard, and my supporters worked too hard. For them, I don’t concede. But I’m satisfied, whichever way it goes. I am prepared,” Ramon said.
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