Runoff election happening December 14
Update: The runoff election is happening December 14, 2024. Races including El Paso Mayor and a number of El Paso City Council District seats will be decided.
EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) - Early voting started on Monday for the runoff elections in El Paso county. The pace of voting is off to a typical start for recent mayoral runoffs when compared to such elections over the last decade - slow but steady, with usually much less turnout than the general election.
5,005 voters, or about twenty-five hundred people a day, have been making their way to the polls for the first two days of early voting. That's significantly less than the 33,675 voters that had cast their ballots by this point in early voting for the November election.
But it is in line with mayoral runoff early voting for about the last 10 years. At the same point in 2020's runoff, 4,623 people had cast their ballots. That year also had Thanksgiving and Black Friday come between the first and second day of the early voting schedule. Similarly in 2017, 5,077 had headed to the polls by the second day of early voting that year.
2013's turnout is a bit of an outlier, with 8,658 having voted at this same point. That's likely due in part to changes in how voting works over this time. Before 2018, mayoral and city council elections were held in May on odd-numbered years, as opposed to being in-line with presidential and congressional elections in November on even-numbered years now. At that time, El Paso actually saw lower turnouts for the general election than the runoff. That's attributed at least partially to crowded mayoral fields (no fewer than 6 candidates on the ballot since 2013), with the runoff choices clearer as crowded fields were then narrowed.
As ABC-7 has reported, early voting is a bit shorter for this year's runoff - going until next Tuesday, December 10th with election day itself on Saturday, December 14th.
ABC-7 will be bringing the Borderland complete coverage of the run-up to and of course on election day.
For more details how and where to vote, you can visit the El Paso County Elections Department at epcountyvotes.com
