Early voting turnout in the 2023 municipal election was down about 7% from 2021, according to San Antonio political strategist Bert Santibañez.
The seven-day early voting period ended Tuesday. Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturday for election day. (Find your council district here, a sample ballot here, our comprehensive voter guide here and a list of election day polling locations here.)
San Antonio voters will elect 10 City Council members and a mayor, with a June 10 runoff scheduled for any race in which no candidate receives 50% or more of the vote.
Also on the ballot is a proposed charter amendment, known as Proposition A or the Justice Charter, which aims to decriminalize marijuana and abortion, severely limit no-knock warrants, ban chokeholds, expand the city’s cite-and-release policy for low-level, nonviolent crimes and establish a justice director position within the city’s administration.
The Bexar County Elections Department, which runs local elections for San Antonio and its other municipalities, did not respond to a request for citywide voting data. It posted countywide early voting numbers on Facebook Tuesday night.
City of San Antonio voters cast about 96,800 ballots during early voting, including in-person and mail-in ballots, said Santibañez, who works for several council candidates and uses the voter file to track turnout by council district.
That’s compared to about 104,400 ballots cast during early voting in the city’s 2021 municipal election, according to Santibañez’s data. That year voters were deciding on two propositions, one on using city bond funding for affordable housing projects, and another that would have stripped collective bargaining rights from the police union, known as Proposition B.
Though Proposition B failed by roughly 3,500 votes, it dramatically increased voter turnout.
Overall voter turnout in 2021 exceeded 17%, compared to less than 12% voter participation in 2019, 2017, and 2015.
Santibañez said the last two days of early voting this year saw an uptick of women and voters with a history of participating in Democratic primaries, after men and people with Republican voting history exceeded their normal vote share in the first week of early voting.
Observers on both sides of the aisle chalked the high turnout among conservatives up to stronger-than-expected opposition to Proposition A, which the police union and business groups have spent millions campaigning against.
On Monday supporters of the proposal acknowledged that enthusiasm gap and said they still hoped to engage their own voters, who were not turning out at 2021 rates, through aggressive grassroots efforts in the final stretch.
“We’re of course seeing the same things that everyone is as far as turnout,” said Aaron Arguello, a San Antonio advocacy organizer for MOVE Texas.
“We try to address that issue by spending every day before the election connecting with voters on what we’ve seen firsthand are wildly popular policies,” said Arguello.
“We’ve been out there on campuses, knocking doors, making calls.”
Most of the state’s local elections take place May 6.
Bexar County is also hosting school bond elections in Southwest and Alamo Heights independent school districts, as well as school board races in Southwest ISD, Northside ISD, San Antonio ISD, Harlandale ISD, Judson ISD and Southwest ISD.
The Bexar County Elections Department reported a countywide early vote total of 106,948.
The busiest locations during early voting were at Brook Hollow Library in District 9, with 8,409 voters, and Semmes Branch Library, in District 10, with 6,057 voters. In person early vote counts by polling location are listed here.
