WILCO — It took all 65 polling locations in Williamson County to determine who would serve as judge.
Incumbent Bill Gravell was re-elected for his second term against Blane Conklin and Wes Benedict.
“First of all, I am grateful. The people of Williamson to serve as county judge,” Gravell said. “It’s humbling when you have people standing in line, some up to an hour to vote, it’s moving you know, and I am really thankful for that.”
Gravell, republican, received 49% of the vote, and his opponent Blane Conklin, democrat, had 46%. Liberaltarian candidate Wes Benedict only received 3% of the vote.
Gravell believes the next four years will be challenging but is ready for the task.
“We are in a 50 year high of inflation, eventually that is going to catch up with us with reduced home values or home prices which is good for the residents, but it sure makes it awful complicated for the government when you are trying to pay for services,” he said. “I think we have got good days ahead, but we also have significant challenges.”
In other Williamson County races, Rhonda Redden, republican, defeated incumbent Stacy Hackenberg, democrat, for the Justice of the Peace Precinct 4 seat.
Redden received just over half of the votes with 54%. Hackenberg had 46% of the 45,000 voters in the county.
The seat for County Commissioner Precinct 4 still belongs to Russ Boles, who defeated Jose Orta. Boles, republican, won the race with 54% of the vote, while Orta, democrat, had 46%. A total of 45,578 voters cast a ballot in the race.
Voter turnout
Ballot boxes ballooned compared to last year as more voters hit the polls on Election Day.
In 2021, Williamson County had a low 14.37% turnout with only 49,454 ballots cast out of the 344,244 registered voters.
This year, voter turnout was four times as much as last year. A total of 225,939 ballots were cast from 416,327 registered voters, resulting in 54.27% turnout.
The trend is similar to 2019 and 2020. In 2019, there were only 49,084 votes cast out of 392,855 registered voters, 12.49%. The following year, which was a presidential election year, the increase was 12 times as many voters. Voter turnout was 75.64% with 291,251 votes out of 385,065 registered voters. The trend of going from lower turnout to higher turnout the following year goes back as far as 2011. That year there was only 6.83% voter turnout. In 2012, voter turnout increased to 64.62%. The next year, 2013, dropped to 11.47%, followed by 38031% in 2014.
It dropped to 11% again in 2015, before going back up to 67% in 2016. The lowest voter turnout in recent memory was in 2017 with 5% turnout. It jumped to 62% in 2018.
