LON GONZALEZ: More than 19,000 ballots (approximately 34% of registered voters) were cast in Victoria County before Election Day, making them just one of many across the state to see early voting records soar to new heights for the midterm election.
KAREN CLINE: I think people were really excited about the races that were on the ballot, and we also worked with a lot of our community partners to drive our voter registration numbers up and to inform the public about when the dates were and where that they could go vote. We also had support from our commissioners' court. We were able to open two new polling locations, so we just really did a lot of outreach this time ahead of the election, so people were really aware of what was happening.
LON GONZALEZ: Victoria County was not unscathed by recent voter registration issues, but historical season all the same. What's this particular season been like?
KAREN CLINE: We did have a lot more people to register to vote during coming up into the midterm. We had, in addition to our staff, we had a voter registration week. That the whole week we had voter registration boxes throughout the county where people could stop and register. We also had our volunteer deputy registrars out in the county working hard to get people registered, and there's just a really big push to get those numbers up.
LON GONZALEZ: On the county level, most positions ran unopposed. The exception was, of course, county treasurer race between incumbent Paige Foster and Patricia Youngblood. What were some other races that county voters seem to have, according to results?
KAREN CLINE: Just the state races, and of course the Ken Paxton, James Talarico. They received lots of votes in that, and the governor received a lot of votes. So both of those were really people were really interested in those two particular races.
LON GONZALEZ: Usually we hear the lead up to and about the election, and then what comes next for the elected officials? But what comes next for your office?
KAREN CLINE: Well, we still have provisional ballots that have to be gone through and certified if they are accepted or not. We still have FPCAs, which are our people overseas, our military members. They still have time to get those in up to six days after the election, and we still have some of our ballot by mail people. They have six days to correct any defects to their ballot to come in and get those all done. So the next six days is going to be a big push to kind of get those final final numbers in. That's why it's unofficial up to this point until we do our canvass, and then after that we will have our partial manual hand count audit, where we have a group of folks come in, and the Secretary of State tells us we want to see what the numbers are for this race from this precinct, and we actually sit down and we hand count every single ballot for that. The work is not done.
