The first day of early voting for the December runoff election began with a slow start on Monday morning, as only about 2,100 Houston area voters cast their ballots to determine who would become the next mayor, controller and be on city council.
“Houston voters will decide half of the 50 percent of the city’s elected leadership,” Harris County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth said at a press conference on Monday morning. “So, this election is just as important as the November election.”
According to Hudspeth, county officials sent out roughly 18,000 mail ballots to voters older than 65, who are disabled or meet other qualifications to vote by mail. She advised those coming to vote in person to ensure that they live within the legal boundaries of Houston or Baytown and Bellaire – as these areas also have contests featured on December’s ballot.
Hudspeth said she expects voting to pick up throughout the early voting period, which ends Tuesday, December 5.
The top ballot race between mayoral candidates Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee and State Senator John Whitmire will likely garner the most voter attention as each vie to take over for term-limited Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner.
Rice University political science professor Mark Jones said Whitmire is set to win over Jackson Lee as long as he maintains the support of at least one of every three Democratic voters – which he has now – and one out of those three voters is Republican.
He added that Whitmire tends to draw the Republican vote because he is the more moderate of the two Democratic candidates. Although the runoff is likely to result in a Whitmire victory, Jones said he would be interested to see how much of a lead the state senator may take over Jackson Lee.
“The only doubts that exist are around his (Whitmire’s) margin of victory, which could be as low as single digits or as high as the mid-teens,” he said.
Whitmire finished with 43 percent in the November election, and Jackson Lee trailed behind, collecting 35 percent of the votes, respectively.
According to Jones, Whitmire’s margin of victory could be lower than expected if there is a drop in Republican voter turnout or if he loses a significant share of the Democratic support he has now – which is unlikely.
Jones said he expects Republican turnout to drop slightly more than Democratic turnout because no Republicans are in the city’s top ballot race. This lower Republican turnout will likely affect the results of the city’s controller runoff between Orlando Sanchez and Chris Hollins, as Sanchez is the Republican candidate.
Jones said Hollins had already entered the race with more name recognition and campaign financing, ending November’s election with 45 percent of the overall vote to Sanchez’s 27 percent.
“Even if it’s only 2, 3 or 4 percent (of decreased Republican turnout), it’s still votes that are coming away from Sanchez that are almost exclusively Sanchez votes,” he said.
Jones said in the race between City Council District G candidates Mary Nan Huffman and Tony Buzbee, Huffman is set to win against Buzbee. Huffman came just short of beating the high-profile attorney after finishing in November with 49 percent of the total votes cast.
He added that the incumbents in City Council races – which Huffman is – also tend to garner more voter support. This is the case in the race for District D between incumbent Dr. Carolyn Evans-Shabazz and fellow candidate Travis McGee, as Evans-Shabazz is favored to win.
Jones said the more uncertain races are on the down ballots for city council at-large positions one, two and three, as any of the six candidates have equal – or close to equal – chances at securing their respective seats.
Jones expects December’s runoff election turnout to be moderately lower than November’s turnout. He estimates that about 225,000 total Houston-area voters will cast their ballots.
According to Hudspeth, early voting operations ran smoothly on Monday, with all 41 of the county’s vote centers opening on time at 7 a.m. Harris County election officials recorded 13,000 in-person early voters by the end of the voting day.
Early voting runs through Tuesday, December 5, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. every day, except Sunday, December 3, when vote centers will be open from noon to 7 p.m. Election Day is Saturday, December 9.
The last day to apply for a ballot to vote by mail is Tuesday, November 28.
![Harris County Clerk Says There’s No Reason Not to Get Out to Vote Saturday [UPDATED]](https://i0.wp.com/www.houstonpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/electionday.webp.webp?resize=600%2C450&ssl=1)
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
