Updated on March 27 at 11:47 a.m.
Several seats on the Georgetown City Council and Georgetown ISD School Board are up for grabs in the upcoming May election.
In preparation for the May election,
Community Impact Newspaper pulled the Williamson County voting records for all 12 candidates over the past 10 years. Voting records, which are kept by the county, don’t show how a person voted. But it does show how many times a person has voted in that county.
These records do not tally votes for other counties. A candidate that lived elsewhere within the past 10 years may have been very active, voting in every election in their respective county. But the absence of an election on their Williamson County voting record was marked as a "no" as they had not voted in Williamson County.
Some elections over the past 10 years were only applicable to parts of the county or certain political parties. This analysis only includes the elections in which every candidate, Republican or Democrat, would have been eligible to vote had they lived the entirety of the 10-year period at the address listed on their voting record. That resulted in 29 elections to examine. The candidates could have cast a combined total of 348 votes but only 140 votes were logged, indicating that the candidates voted 40.23 percent of the time.
According to
The Texas Tribune, voter turnout in Texas for the 2016 presidential election was 42.6 percent. Every Georgetown candidate analyzed voted in that election. However, at least six of the candidates would have had to vote in each of the other elections to beat Texas’ average during the 2016 presidential election. Out of the 28 other elections, only seven elections had candidate turnouts of more than 42.6 percent.
Lawrence Romero has a record of voting five times in the county, but only as recently as 2012. Jaquita Wilson has no record voting in the county before 2013. Sherwin Kahn’s record appears to be the newest voting record for the candidates as his oldest vote in Williamson County is from 2014.
Dale Ross, the incumbent running for the Mayor of Georgetown, showed the most consistency with Williamson County voting. He logged 21 possible votes in a row in the county. Ridavel Ortego comes after him with seven votes. All the candidates voted in at least two elections in a row, with five voting twice in a row.
The candidate that voted in the most elections out of the examined elections was also Ross at a total of 27. He only missed two of the examined elections. The candidates that voted the fewest times in local elections were Ben Stewart, Jaquita Wilson and Lawrence Romero, each with five votes.
Melanie Dunham, who is an incumbent running to keep her seat on the school board, did not vote in the May 12, 2012 general and special elections, which was specific to Georgetown ISD voters. She also did not vote in the 2011 joint general and special election in May, or the 2008 local political subdivisions election, which both included items for GISD on the ballot.
Jaquita Wilson did not vote in the May 7, 2016 general and special election or the May 10, 2014 general and special election, which both had GISD items on the ballot. She also did not vote in at least six other elections that had GISD items on the ballot, though those six elections were held prior to 2013—her earliest voting record in the county.
Jimmy C. Jones Jr. voted in six elections. Though he voted in the 2016 presidential election, Jones had previously not voted in the county since 2012. All other candidates had voted more recently. That four-year gap is also the largest of any candidate from the time of their first documented vote in the county. Jones was also the only candidate who did not vote in the 2016 primary election.
The 2006 primary election had one voter: Ross, who is also the only one who voted in the 2016 Williamson County primary runoff. Ortego is the only one who voted in the 2007 constitutional and joint election. All other elections had more than one voter.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story used the wrong voting record for school board candidate Ben Stewart, whose legal name is Robert Stewart. The analysis said the address on his voting record placed him in Leander ISD, according to election maps on the Williamson County website. The other Ben Stewart would not have been able to vote in Georgetown ISD elections, which was noted in the article. However, though a resident in GISD bounds, Stewart neglected to vote in some elections with GISD items on the ballot. Both Stewart's voted the same number of times and in nearly the same elections. The chart has been updated to show the elections in which candidate Ben Stewart voted.
