20 Travis County ballots added to election totals Monday night, Watson still on top
AUSTIN (KXAN) — After KXAN called Austin Mayor Kirk Watson the apparent winner in the mayoral race last week, a new batch of provisional ballots was added to the Travis County election totals Monday night, the night before official results are required to be posted.
Watson is above the runoff threshold, now by 13 votes, according to KXAN’s results team. In Texas, even though Watson is more than 100,000 votes ahead of the next candidate, he’s got to have more than 50% of the vote to avoid a runoff.
Tuesday, Austin City Council canvassed and signed off on the final results, making Watson the official winner in that race.
“On Friday November 15th, voter registration staff was entering provisional ballot history, which is the final step for our office in the election process. This stage is one of the final of many steps that compare entries by different parties to ensure accuracy. Through this procedure, it was determined 75 provisional ballots had not fully completed that process. Appropriate individuals were immediately notified and contacted the Secretary of State for guidance. As with every election, processes will be reviewed for any necessary modifications to increase efficiency and foster confidence in our open and accurate elections. The public should feel confident all eligible votes were counted. We are thankful current systems revealed this issue and it was able to be rectified,” a spokesperson for the Travis County Tax Assessor said.
https://www.kxan.com/news/local/travis-county/20-travis-county-ballots-added-to-election-totals-monday-night-watson-still-on-top/