Sen. Sylvia Garcia
Early voting concluded Friday in the special election to replace Sylvia Garcia in Senate District 6, and the low turnout is about what the Harris County clerk expected.
More than 1,097 voters cast ballots Friday either in person or by mail, bringing the early voting tally to 10,011.
Turnout typically spikes on the last day of early voting, but heavy rains that began Friday afternoon may have encouraged residents to wait until regular balloting on Tuesday. Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart expects just shy of 20,000 of registered voters the district to participate, for a turnout of about 6 percent.
The race features four candidates: Democratic state Reps. Carol Alvarado and Ana Hernandez, Democratic consultant Mia Mundy and Harris County Republican Party precinct chairwoman Martha Fierro.
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If no candidate receives 50 percent of the vote, a runoff election will be held. If Alvarado or Hernandez ultimately prevails, Harris County must hold a special election, likely in January, to fill her House seat in the Legislature. That election would be overseen by incoming county clerk Diane Trautman, who defeated Stanart in November.
Polls will be open Tuesday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Residents can find their voting location at HarrisVotes.com.
Here’s the final daily Early Voting report. For comparison purposes, there were 8,690 total early votes in the January 2013 special election, and 9,586 total early votes in the March 2013 runoff. So, while it’s fair to say that early voting was light, it is also the case that more people turned out than in either of the 2013 SD06 specials. That doesn’t mean final turnout will be higher, given the trends in early voting, but early voting was cut short on Friday at the Moody Park location because of the weather, so we may get some votes shifted to Tuesday because of that. For what it’s worth, here are the recent numbers for similar elections in the county:
District K, May 2017 – 3,604 early, 5,135 total = 70.19% early
HISD VII runoff, December 2016 – 3,926 early, 6,585 total = 59.62% early
HD139, May 2016 – 1,433 early, 1,855 total = 77.25% early
SD04 runoff, August 2014 – 2,362 early, 3,388 total = 69.72% early
SD04, May 2014 – 2,689 early, 4,080 total = 65.91% early
SD06 runoff, March 2013 – 9,586 early, 18,252 total = 52.52% early
SD06, January 2013 – 8,690 early, 16,511 total = 52.63% early
The county is planning for about 20K total votes (remember that some absentee ballots are still coming in), so we’ll see. You can find your Election Day polling location here. Get out there and vote.