{"id":65178,"date":"2025-11-26T00:57:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T00:57:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/65178\/"},"modified":"2025-11-26T00:57:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T00:57:12","slug":"mayor-jones-asks-council-to-move-city-elections-to-november","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/65178\/","title":{"rendered":"Mayor Jones asks council to move city elections to November"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones has asked City Council to move the city\u2019s municipal elections from May to November, a move state lawmakers set the stage for earlier this year.<\/p>\n<p>The change would save taxpayers $1 million, improve voter turnout and bring San Antonio in line with what many other local governments in Texas are doing, <a href=\"https:\/\/sanantonioreport.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Date-of-Muncipal-Elections-Memo.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">according to a letter<\/a> Jones sent to council on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>Texas lawmakers passed bipartisan legislation earlier this year allowing local governments to move their elections in odd-numbered years to November.<\/p>\n<p>But individual city councils still need to vote in order to move their elections by Dec. 31, or they\u2019ll miss out on the opportunity, absent additional legislation.<\/p>\n<p>Not moving the elections would make San Antonio an outlier among the largest cities in Texas, Jones argued in her letter to council members. Houston and Austin already hold their municipal elections in November, and earlier this month, Dallas City Council voted to join them.<\/p>\n<p>The mayor provided additional materials to council, including a <a href=\"https:\/\/sanantonioreport.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Moving-to-November-Elections.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">commentary from<\/a> political science professors Melissa Marschall with Rice University and Zoltan Hajnal with University of California in San Diego arguing that the busier November elections lead to better municipal turnout.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNationwide research also indicates that a move from May to November could double turnout, and numbers for Houston and the other Texas cities that hold November elections are in the same ballpark,\u201d the researchers wrote, adding that holding multiple contests on the same ballot is more efficient, and often saves money for local governments.<\/p>\n<p>Jones argued that the move makes sense.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI haven\u2019t heard of a good reason [not to do it],\u201d the mayor said in a phone interview. \u201cI think that\u2019s why you\u2019ve seen so many people do this. The cost saving, which is significant, but also ensuring that our election results could be more representative of the cross-section of our population.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones has asked City Council to move the city\u2019s municipal elections from May&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65179,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[33930,3239,82,3240,84,83,293,92,3028,11150,3219],"class_list":["post-65178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-local-elections","tag-mayor-gina-ortiz-jones","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-city-council","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news","tag-texas-legislature","tag-top-story","tag-typedaily","tag-voter-turnout","tag-wc-less-than-500"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}