(Seguin) – Although the March 1 Republican and Democratic Primary Elections resulted in success, there was a hiccup reported along the way – a hiccup that was not only isolated for election officials here in Guadalupe County. That’s according to Guadalupe County Elections Administrator Lisa Hayes.
Hayes says that challenge involved the process with the mail ballot program.
“I think the main challenges we faced were not of our making – our, being us, the elections office or the voters themselves. Senate Bill 1 and the legislation that happened this summer really gave us some challenge to work with in regard to what our mail ballot voters had to provide. They had to put an ID number on their application by ballot by mail and then they had to put an ID number on their carrier envelope of their ballot by mail and it had to be an ID number that matched what was on their voter registration record and we faced a lot of challenges with the voters not completing that information because it was a new law. It’s a new piece of information that they haven’t had to apply to our mail ballot program,” said Hayes.
Hayes says although it took a little more effort, her office was still successful in obtaining the information they needed — ensuring that all votes were counted at the end.
“The upside of that is that when we did identify voters who had not completed that information on their mail ballots, we were able to contact them and give them options as far as coming in and curing that. So, they could come in and cure it. They could vote in person so there were other things available to them that allowed them to still exercise their right to vote but it did create some challenges for both, I think, us as the elections office and for our mail ballot voters because it was something we didn’t have to deal with before,” said Hayes.
Despite having to overcome the learning curve tossed to them by the state, Hayes says the overall process did illustrate a good job by voters who came out to the polls.
“In the 2018 Gubernatorial Primary, our overall turnout was 16.96 percent. In the 2020 Presidential Primary, our turnout was 26.22 percent. So, there’s quite a difference in the presidential and gubernatorial but for this gubernatorial election, we actually right now without any late provisional countable ballots, we are at 18.37 percent so I feel like that is a pretty good turnout for a Primary. The voters really did come out and vote and make their voice heard and I think that’s excellent. Now, we need them to come out on May 7 on the Constitutional Amendment, the cities and schools’ election and the (May 24) Primary Runoff – we want them to keep coming out and voting as we gear up towards the November election,” said Hayes.
By already facing the issue with the mail in ballots, Hayes says her office is one step ahead for the next election.
“That law is currently in effect so for the May 7th Constitutional Amendment Election, for the May 24th Primary Runoff and the November 8 Election, that law is in place for all of those things so what we‘ve been encouraging our voters to do when they reach out to us about one of these deficiencies, we’ve been making sure that they are aware that it just doesn’t have to happen on the carry envelope for this election but for every election moving forward so we are hoping that as we keep going towards November, that we will have more voters that are remembering to put that information on there,” said Hayes.
Now although the elections office has released the results of the March 1 Primary Elections, those results are still very much unofficial until all votes are recorded and until they are canvassed and deemed official by the various entities including Guadalupe County.