Ina Minjarez
Early voting for the HD124 runoff was last week, with Tuesday the 21st being Runoff Day. According to the Bexar County Elections website, 1165 early votes cast so far in the runoff for HD124. That’s a slight improvement over the March 31 election, in which 1002 early votes were cast, with 1981 votes total. That means at least 817 votes need to be cast on Tuesday for runoff turnout to top the “regular” election, which isn’t saying much but would still be better than the alternative.
It’s not too surprising that turnout for the runoff will at least be on par with the first round. The first election was called very quickly, and because it wasn’t known that this election and not one in a different district would be needed until the SD26 runoff had concluded, the candidates had to start from scratch with no pre-SD26 election head start. The turnaround time for this runoff was miniscule as well, but at least the candidates were already fully engaged and could hit the ground running. That had to make it a little easier to get people back to the polls for the third and now fourth time this year.
None of this is optimal from a participation perspective, but with the legislative session going on it was the best that could be done to get someone seated in this district. As neither chamber has exactly had its hair on fire to get stuff done, the good news is that whether Ina Minjarez or Delicia Herrera gets sworn in next week, she will have a chance to vote on a bunch of relevant issues. That will give her a chance to have some semblance of a record the voters can evaluate in 2016, when more of them will know it’s time to vote again.