The votes are (finally) in

Election Day turned into Election Night and eventually Election Morning at the Gonzales County Clerk’s Office where the day’s votes were being counted. Though most races in the county were decided by midnight, the contest for Precinct 1 Constable wouldn’t be final until 6 a.m.

During the Election Day, several polling places ran out of Republican ballots early, forcing GOP officials to scramble to find a solution. The fix: printing more ballots on office printers. It’s a fine legal solution but for one problem: the ballots could not be counted by the electronic tabulating machine, thus needing to be counted by hand. There were 473 more votes counted for that race by hand after the machines were put to sleep.

While the public is now used to exit polling with near instantaneous results, old-school county vote counting sometimes takes a while. People forget that it used to take days sometimes to count all the votes from far-flung locales. So as night stretched into morning, candidates Leslie Pirkle and Scott Rhodes waited for results — as did their many supporters.

But by daybreak, Pirkle had edged out Rhodes, 1,087 votes to 1,018.

Over in the county’s premier race, the outcome was clear after early voting totals were announced.

Shortly after 7 p.m., sheriff candidate Matt Atkinson jumped out to a commanding lead in the early voting numbers and didn’t look back. When the voting machine numbers were released by midnight, Atkinson would post a lead that would be too large for his opponents to overcome. Atkinson received 1,867 votes to Clay Allen’s 860 and Floyd Toliver’s 531. With Atkinson nabbing 57 percent of the vote, there will not be a runoff.

For Precinct 1 County Commissioner, the outcome also was never in doubt once the early voting numbers were released. Incumbent K.O. “Dell” Whiddon came away with 674 votes to Stephen Pirkle’s 309.

In the other contested race within the county, incumbent Constable Derek Johnson retained his seat in Precinct 3, scoring 285 votes to Mitchell Bennett’s 190. Curtis Hadnot — who had earlier in the season dropped from the race — wound up with 12 votes.  

Running unopposed was Precinct 4 Constable John Moreno who gathered 339 votes, Precinct 3 County Commissioner Kevin LaFleur with 753 votes, Tax Assessor-Collector Crystal Cedillo with 2,612 and County Attorney Paul Watkins with 2,587 votes.

On the ballot, Gonzales County voters sided with the rest of the district when it came to state representative. Incumbent John Cyrier carried the county with 1,914 votes to his opponent Brent Golemon’s 1,149. District totals were Cyrier with 13,969 to Golemon’s 7,555. This is the third time in 14 months that voters have rejected Golemon in this contest.

In the race for U.S. Rep. District 27, incumbent Congressman Blake Farenthold held off a furious volley from Gregg Deeb. Gonzales voters chose Farenthold 1,335-790 with district totals giving 42,872 to Farenthold and 33,699 to Deeb.

In the county’s other GOP congressional race, Rey Gonzalez, Jr. lost the county to William “Willie” Vaden, 401-364. But the district totals were equally as close but with Gonzalez coming out on top 12,530-12,252. Gonzalez will go on to face Democratic Congressman Filemon Vela in the November general election.

In another race where the county totals differed from the eventual winner, Gonzales hotel owner Rick Green bested incumbent Supreme Court Place 5 Justice Paul Green 1,906-977 in county votes but lost overall in the statewide race, with 1,077,393 votes going to Paul Green and 991,567 going to Rick Green.

For president, GOP voters decided that Ted Cruz would be best to lead America, giving him 1,698 votes. Donald J. Trump was good enough for second place, earning 984 votes and Marco Rubio placed third with 357. Those numbers closely mirrored those of the rest of the state.

And on the Democratic ticket, voters gave Hillary Clinton the nod with 368 votes with Bernie Sanders earning 129. Martin O’Malley, the only other major candidate remaining on the ballot, received 2 votes.

Voters will have the chance to head back to the polls in a couple of months though, for a statewide race for railroad commissioner is yet to be decided along with a smattering of judicial contests.