Judge J.D.
March 09,2006
Victoria Hirschberg
The Monitor

Salinas earns majority over Garcia with all precincts in

EDINBURG ? It looks like Juan de Dios "J.D." Salinas garnered enough votes to be the next Hidalgo County Judge after all 140 precincts reported Wednesday afternoon ? almost one day after polls closed.

But incumbent Ramon Garcia said he?s not ready to concede yet. He wants all votes counted and evaluated, and as of late Wednesday, Elections Administrator Teresa Navarro said there were 22 outstanding votes ? one provisional ballot and 21 potential ballots from overseas ? and Garcia, 57, said he wants everything in place before conceding.

"There are issues that need to be looked at," he said. "We?ve been getting quite a bit of phone calls and quite a bit of information to digest."

Meanwhile, Salinas, 37, is eager to start work and planning for his upcoming post, which he will take Jan. 1, 2007. After

watching most of the votes come in late Tuesday and early Wednesday, Salinas said he is glad it?s over.

"There seemed like there wasn?t closure (until the last precinct was counted)," he said. "I knew I had the votes, I just wanted it to be posted."

Unofficial results from the Elections Department indicate that Salinas had 24,479 votes, while Garcia received 24,188. Overall, about 51,400 people voted in Hidalgo County.

Amid rumors of lost ballot boxes and missing building keys, Navarro said primary night glitches were relatively minor. In fact, if it wasn?t for the tight county judge race, people wouldn?t have noticed the hold-ups, she said.

"Because it was so close and when you have (situations) occurring, you?re that much more careful," she said.

The first situation occurred at the Kika de la Garza building in Mission. Here, there was confusion when an election judge reported three votes from an unused machine. Navarro said those were from the November constitutional election and were not counted in Tuesday?s primary.

Then, election judges at Hidalgo City Hall forgot to close the machines properly, thus causing a late-night drive to get the votes, Navarro said. That site was the last precinct to report. Navarro said they waited until mid-Wednesday to report the results because she wanted to carefully check the numbers. The approximate 200 votes from Hidalgo bumped up Salinas? numbers.

Until almost 6 p.m. Wednesday, technicians were working to retrieve 30 votes from a La Villa site. Navarro said the machine malfunctioned, but after several hours of maneuvering, the votes were posted.

Overall, she said most of the glitches were human error.

"(Elections workers) know everyone is waiting. They?re nervous," she said. "But overall, you?re just looking at three locations."

Although Hidalgo County officials recently invested millions of dollars in a new computerized-touch screen voting system, election workers still physically need to close machines, print results and drive them to the Elections Department in Edinburg.

As for the 22 overseas votes, the Secretary of State mandated that these votes must be received by March 20, as long as they were postmarked before 7 p.m. on March 7. The Ballot Board must approve the provisional ballot, Navarro said.

"My point is we have to make sure everything is in order if it affects the outcome of the election," she said.

The only disappointing point for Navarro was the low turnout on primary day. Out of about 271,000 registered voters, about 19 percent voted. Possibly, voters stayed away this year so they could sign petitions for independent gubernatorial candidates Carole Keeton Strayhorn and Kinky Friedman, she said. These challengers need signatures from 45,540 Texans who did not vote in the primary before May 11.

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