RUNOFF FROM SPECIAL ELECTION LIKELY IN FEBRUARY

  

 A need for a runoff from Tuesday’s election for the Texas House District 13 seat, which will be between former Austin County Judge Carolyn Bilski and Caldwell Attorney Leighton Schubert, will most likely occur in mid-February.

The seat was vacated by Lois Kolkhorst when she was elected to the Texas Senate.

Voter turnout was low, with only 9,936 total votes cast between the seven participating counties, with the rundown of Schubert getting 3, 259 votes and Bilski receiving 4319 votes. A dismal 2,731 people in Washington County cast votes out of a total of 22,000 registered voters

Governor-elect Abbot will set the election, and he doesn’t take office until next Tuesday.

The votes in each of the seven counties in the election must still be canvassed by each of the county’s commissioner’s courts, then sent to the Texas secretary of state’s office for certification by the deadline of January 26.

The votes have three weeks to be canvassed, and there must be time allotted for this to be done, which,

according to County Clerk Beth Rothermel, leaves little time to prepare for the runoff.

The ballots need time to be printed, and Rothermel says that if the time frame is less than three weeks, they might have to print their own ballots and then count them by hand.

Rothermel praises cooperation between the local Democrat and Republican parties, and how they help each other, and that that is not true in every county.