As of Monday night, the Cameron County Elections Office in charge of the City of Brownsville city commission elections reported that 6,249 votes have been cast in seven days, with today being the last day of the eight-day early voting period.
If statistics bear out past voting trends, another 893 votes should come in today (6,249 divided by seven). Unless there is a last-day abnormality, that should make the total votes cast in the early voting period close to 7,140.
And if stats (those damn stats again) reflect past trends again, another 30 to 35 percent will be cast election day, Saturday May 4, bringing the total to some 9,500.
Given the fact that there are 14 candidates for four positions, there is a high probability that no one candidate in each of those races will garner the required 50 percent plus one vote that would prevent a runoff.
If that bears out, fatigued voters should brace themselves for another month of campaigning by the surviving candidates for a decreasing voter turnout.
Elections Administrator Remi Garza said there are just shy of 100,000 registered voters eligible to voter in the city commission elections, making the projected 9,500 votes less than 10 percent of the registered voters casting ballots in the municipal elections.
A wag puts it this way: Make believe that the City of Brownsville is a lifeboat and there are 10 people in it. Given that there is only a 10 percent voter turnout, this means that one person in that vote will decide who gets to share in the food, has water to drink, gets shelter, or even who gets to stay on the boat.
A low turnout effectively places the decisions in a very small group of people who gets to decide who gets the public assets and control over them.