Voters move mayoral elections

Austin voters have resoundingly embraced moving the city’s mayoral elections to sync with presidential elections. Just over 66 percent of voters – 102,070, to be precise – endorsed the move, which is intended to increase turnout in mayoral elections. To enable the switch, Austin’s next mayor will be elected for a two-year term in November 2022, before getting on pace for the new cycle starting in November 2024. This also means that the mayoral election will join the cycle of City Council districts 2, 4, 6, 7 and 10. That leaves Council districts 1, 3 5, 8 and 9 paired with the Texas governor’s race. For comparison, the four most recent presidential elections (starting with the most recent and going back in time) saw turnout of 78.89 percent, 64.56 percent, 60.34 percent and 65.08 percent of registered voters, according to the Office of the City Clerk. The two mayoral elections held under the single-member district system saw turnout of 60.5 percent in 2018 and 40.4 percent in a 2014 race that had candidates from all of the Council districts.