Rosenberg, Texas, held a non-partisan run-off for City Council, district 3, on June 13. Libertarian Party member Scott Robert Peterson won the run-off by three votes, 247-244.
Rosenberg has a population of 38,282 and is in Fort Bend County, in the part of Texas that once elected Ron Paul to Congress. See this story from Independent Political Report.
Real libertarian or fake like Chase Oliver?
Elected nonpartisan, correct? District election? How many.districts?
@Q,
A: Nonpartisan. Seven member city council: The mayor, two members elected at-large by position, four members elected by district. Majority is required for election. In this case four candidates ran in general election in May, and a runoff was needed. Turnout held up remarkably from the May election given that there was an intervening partisan primary runoff and only one district was involved.
A city of 38k might have about 20k voters. With 4 districts, that would be 5k voters/districts. Less than 500 votes = high single digit turnout.
@HG,
In 2024, registration was 21,183. The results for 2026 have not been canvassed yet. This might or might not be 100% accurate since city limits and city council districts might not be coincident with county election precincts.
So about 8-9% turnout,I guess.
Registration for District 3: 4696
491/4696 = 10.5%
For the first round:
541/4696 = 11.5%
So still about 90% sit out rate.
90% sit-out rate because idiots would rather pay attention to state and national races, when local races are far more important.
Most people are not idiots. They rationally pay little attention to politics of any kind. Whether local races are important depends on what a given person cares about.
Turnout was around 20% for the primary and 10% for the primary runoff. It is hard to tell for sure since the county election precincts don’t conform to city limits or city council districts. The primaries had high profile US senate races. The Republican primary runoff for US senate race was high profile, there was a Lieutenant Governor runoff for the Democrats. Most voters don’t know what the Lieutenant Governor does, nor who the candidates were.
Everyone in the county could vote in the primaries which would have had TV and newspaper coverage as well as direct campaigning with mailers, phone calls, etc. The city elections were conducted by the county as well, but most areas did not have any elections. Countywide turnout was 1.35%, for the runoff 0.12%.
The elections were leapfrogged.
March 3 Primary
May 2 Local elections
May 26 Primary runoff
June 13 Local elections runoff
Congratulations to the lemon party for yet another squeaker of a win in a nonpartisan race for dogcatcher of south sleepyville. Even the dogs rolled over and fell asleep when they heard the “news.”