May 2025 Election Recap

Early Voting ran from  April 20-28. Election Day was Saturday, May 3, 2025.

I had a poll watcher active almost every day of early voting, and TWO present on  Election Day.
When the polls closed on Election  Day,  incumbent Mayor Janice Sanders was trailing Zach Hamlin by ONE VOTE, and I was ahead  by 2 votes for the second council seat. Jason Ince  had decidedly secured a win for one council seat.

But we still had provisional ballots to be "cured" and possibly counted by the Hill County Elections Administrator the following week.

The race was objectively too close to call,  but the City Secretary called us and congratulated us on our win, but did not share any election results to the City's facebook page  until....  May 9th.

On Friday, May 9, the Hill County Elections Administrator examined the provisional ballots. 

One was rejected, and 2 were verified.  I had 2 poll watchers present to observe this part of the process. 

The verified ballots were tabulated by the optical scan machine and the results updated:

Incumbent Janice Sanders was now ahead by ONE vote. 

I picked up two votes, and Sam Pierce picked up one vote, putting me ahead by THREE votes. 

At this point, there was a lot of discontent, disappointment, and concern in the community on the integrity of the election process.

The final election results showed that of the 190 ballots cast, two voters  did not select a choice for the mayor race.  

Those are called "undervotes." 

When using an optical scan  machine to tabulate votes, the machine only counts marks that are inside the square box next to each candidate's name. In some cases, voters will choose to ignore those boxes and mark their ballots in other ways:  the Texas Secretary of State references these as "irregularly marked ballots"  -- they are still VALID ballots, but can only be ascertained  by the human eye. In order to confirm the two reported undervotes, mayoral candidate Zach Hamlin went to City Hall on Tuesday, May 13, and submitted a petition for a recount.  I supported that action: the best way to establish confidence in our election process is to utilize every available method and LOOK at all the ballots.

The recount was ordered for Tuesday,  May 20. 

A recount is a very controlled, very secure process. 

The removal of ballots from a ballot box is a BIG DEAL.

No livestreaming allowed.  No phones.  Door LOCKED.

Each candidate was allowed to bring two Recount Watchers.

Zach was present and brought Ken Scales and Gary Teal [my husband].

Janice was present and had one watcher in the room [Rudy Reyna was  her second watcher but was late, so missed the opportunity to watch  the recount].

Candidate Brian Burkhart was not present and did not send any recount watchers.

The recount was a very decisive way for folks to see the power of the  process: The watchers and candidates all left the recount room with the firsthand knowledge that  the 2 undervotes were clear undervotes, and  all ballots had been correctly tabulated. 

The City of Whitney will have another election  May 02, 2026 for the 3 council seats held by Valery Peacock,  Vicki Wilson, and Cheryl Taylor-West. Get Out and Vote, Whitney! EVERY VOTE MATTERS.

Watch the facebook LIVEstream here: https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1Bg7ybAv4H/

Facebook will only keep a video up for 30 days.  

You can view the video on youtube also:

https://youtu.be/0u0-wy6J8LU

Read the agenda here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zezJ_EeWaQv3bfE3pMaSPKhBTs-lEj7u/view?usp=sharing


TRANSPARENCY  ALERT:
I placed an item on the agenda asking the Council to approve routinely posting a public copy of the Council Agenda PACKET for each meeting on the City’s website. The PACKET includes a lot more information and is already required to be released to the public on request (subject to certain redactions governed by the TX Public Information Act), but that involves waiting for the request then sending it off to only the requestor– not posting it to the City’s site. This motion would have streamlined the process and made the City’s communications more immediate, routine, widespread, and cost effective. My motion died for lack of a “second”-- not a single City Council Member supported this basic increased transparency that is already practiced in LOTS of other cities across Texas.  I would  urge people to contact them, but they do not have contact information posted publicly anywhere  that I have seen. 

One of the points I brought up at the May 22nd meeting was establishing a Volunteer Library Advisory Board since the City had budgeted almost $200,000 to its staffing and operations.

During the subsequent Departmental Reports, our Librarian mentioned a donation BY the "Volunteer Library Advisory Board" and I asked her about that. You can watch the discussion in the video.

I had asked the previous Librarian about whether the City *had* an Advisory Board and was told No.

There have been no notices posted on any social media, paper, or website that I have seen for any meetings (in the last year that I have started watching City operations). 

The foundational part of a Public meeting is.... we don't have to ask: 

they are noticed and generally easy to find.

In further conversation, I made it clear that I am looking for a PUBLIC Advisory board, not just a private foundation Library Board. The entire point of a PUBLIC Advisory Board is that it is legally noticed and generally follows the Texas Open Meetings Act so there is public transparency in how the peoples' tax dollars are being spent.

I have requested more documents about the City's contractual obligations with the Library as well as getting more info from the City Secretary, and look forward to working with folks to bring Library Operations more into the public sphere so folks can see exactly how much is happening, who all is involved/responsible for the success of our library, and how folks can jump in and support the work that is done there for the community.

If anyone in the City Limits is interested in more info regarding this, please reach out and let me know!

Details are forthcoming, but the most concerning  part to ME is that every council member knew about the water problems we’ve had for decades but still chose to blow $50,000 on legally-unnecessary cameras for the library earlier this year and jack up spending without a plan for SOLVING the water problem. The immediate “solution” is a revenue bond:  Stay tuned for more info on that.

https://www2.tceq.texas.gov/oce/penenfac/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.details&rn=302414842024054

Time To  Be Determined, 

but will be several hours long during the day at City Hall. 

Please feel free to attend and watch, ask  questions, and listen to the reasons given  for how the city wants to spend YOUR money. 

I have pledged to not vote for a budget that in my opinion is 

not lean enough, and I will not vote for a property tax increase. 

Residents need tax RELIEF.

At this time, only 20 residents have completed the budget survey.

Please click over and share your opinions!  Use the empty boxes available to share your thoughts and opinions on a variety of things: the election, what projects you want to see pursued,  how low you want taxes dropped, etc. 

The survey ends June 1st!

https://cityofwhitneytx.org/2025/04/23/budget-survey/

During public comment, Daniel Wilson spoke about his daughter Louise's murder in Houston and that he wanted to donate several Flock license  plate readers to the city of Whitney to help solve other crimes, and mentioned funding opportunities to keep  the cameras operational w/o  taxpayer expense.  [You can hear his speech on my stream at 8m10sec in.]  

While I agree that Louise's murder was tragic and unjust, this particular solution comes with incredibly severe concerns on many various legal, civil rights, and Constitutional fronts, as well as documented abuse  of these systems by local officials. I will be gathering information regarding these concerns and reaching out to the Wilson family.

A search for "flock camera concerns"  will populate several recent articles, including this case:

https://ij.org/press-release/judge-rules-lawsuit-challenging-norfolks-use-of-flock-cameras-can-proceed/