Austin mayoral candidate Carmen Llanes Pulido’s request for recount is denied

A request for a recount in the November general election by Austin mayoral candidate Carmen Llanes Pulido has been denied, city officials said.

Llanes Pulido had filed a request Thursday for a recount of the votes in the city’s 11 precincts in Williamson County. Officials said under state law, a recount must be for the entire jurisdiction. Austin stretches across Travis County into Williamson and Hays.

Llanes Pulido has until Monday to decide whether to appeal. She told KUT she is weighing her options.

“The particular sections of the code they are referencing, it’s inconsistent with what was told to us by the legal representative at the Secretary of State’s Office,” she said. “Because we did ask this specific question several times before we submitted this petition.”

Incumbent Mayor Kirk Watson earned the most votes in the Nov. 5 election, but he needed a majority of the vote, or 50% plus one vote, to win outright and avoid a runoff with Llanes Pulido. He declared victory last week, with just 13 votes to spare.

Llanes Pulido said because the margin was razor thin, she felt the community deserved reassurance that every vote was properly counted. She cited irregularities in the vote count.

Earlier this week, Travis County reported it found 75 provisional ballots that had not been fully processed. Twenty were added to the county’s total — 13 of those included votes in the mayor’s race.

“I know how much work goes into securing accuracy and fairness,” Llanes Pulido said. “And so this is not a criticism of any of those leaders, but it is a desire to get a clearer picture of what really happened.”

In a written statement, Watson again declared victory and said the request for a recount was “sowing doubt in the democratic process and creating chaos.”

“All this does is cost more money, waste more time and, even if a recount resulted in my falling under 50%, it would likely be by only a few votes,” he said. “The mayor of Austin should be looking to create stability, especially in a time of instability in other parts of government. We should put the campaign behind us and get back to work. Hopefully, now that the effort to deny the election has been found defective, we can.”

Llanes Pulido told KUT she is not interested in changing the outcome unless that’s what the numbers show.

“I am going to respect the results of the election,” she said.

The director of nonprofit Go Austin/Vamos Austin, Llanes Pulido has been vocal about addressing the city’s affordability issues and has been critical of the city’s recent changes to the land development code.

She also says the city has to do more to address climate change, improve infrastructure and public transportation, and help child care providers.

“I hope this administration — this mayor — can look at this result and see that this razor thin margin says something,” she said. “It says that we need to be coming together and stop excluding people we disagree with. We need to be brave and honest and engage in dialogue and work with our opposition to come up with better solutions for Austin.”

This story was produced as part of the Austin Monitor’s reporting partnership with KUT. This story has been updated.

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