Election Results: Alter, Hassan, Nitsch Victorious
By Chase Hoffberger, December 14, 2016, 10:15am, Newsdesk
Results from Tuesday’s run-off elections seemed destined as soon as early voting figures came in at 7:01pm, one minute after polls closed.
On City Council, challenger Alison Alter held a commanding lead over incumbent Sheri Gallo in District 10, with 66% of the vote – 6,261 out of a total 9,601 ballots cast. At Austin Community College, where two seats on ACC’s Board of Trustees remained up for grabs, Sean Hassan (Place 4) jumped out to an early 29-point lead over Michael Lewis; in Place 9, Julie Ann Nitsch held a 17-point lead over her challenger, Guadalupe Sosa.
Alter’s lead would mostly hold steady throughout the evening. After the final ballots were tallied, she had received 63.9% of the vote (9,442 to 5,315). The same would apply to Hassan and Nitsch, whose leads fluctuated by only a few percentage points, and never seemed in question. Hassan finished with 65% of the vote; Nitsch closed holding 61% over Sosa’s tally.
As expected in such a niche run-off (with no city- or county-wide races up for grabs save for the two ACC seats, which go largely ignored), voter turnout was terrible. Only 22% of registered voters hit the polls in District 10. Those numbers look even worse for the two ACC races: 4.46% of registered voters turned out in Travis County, with only 1.61% showing up to vote on election day.
See Thursday’s Chronicle for more coverage of both races.
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