UPDATE 1/6/15 4:30 pm: After a recount, the official tally of the December 16 runoff in District 4 is unchanged. Candidate Laura Pressley received 1,563 votes, Greg Casar won with 2,854 votes, a margin of nearly 30 percentage points. Casar will be sworn in tonight at City Hall, along with the rest of the Council.
UPDATE 01/05/15 6pm: The Austin City Clerk has recieved the required deposit from Laura Pressley, and the Travis County Clerk has scheduled the recount in the District 4 City Council race for 11 am Tuesday.
UPDATE 01/05/15: Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir now says today's scheduled recount has been cancelled, as the Austin City Clerk awaits receipt of a $13,000 deposit from District 4 candidate Laura Pressley, who requested the recount.
DeBeauvoir says Pressley has until 5 pm Monday to submit the deposit, and that a recount could happen as soon as tomorrow, if the deposit is received.
UPDATE 01/04/15: The Austin City Clerk has approved Pressley's request for a recount, providing the candidate files an amended petition and submits the full amount of a deposit necessary to begin the recount.
According to a memo from City Clerk Jannette Goodall, the Travis County Elections office will hold the recount Monday at 1pm.
EARLIER: A candidate for Austin City Council District 4 has filed a petition for a manual recount the December 16 runoff election.
Laura Pressley lost to Greg Casar in that runoff by about 1,300 votes in the North Central Austin district. 15 percent of the votes would have to change from Casar to Pressley for her to win. But Pressley believes there are a couple of reasons for a recount.
"There appears to be mail-in ballots that were counted more than once during early voting," Pressley says. "The second thing is the total number of votes reported in the December 22 official results from multiple precincts, total votes, were higher than the names listed in the early voting rolls."
Pressley believes there is a mismatch between the number of votes and the names of the people who voted in the election. Since geographic representation is a new process that the city is going through, the city clerk says she will announce soon what the next step is.
Swearing in for the city's new city council members is scheduled for Tuesday night. It's unclear at this point if Casar will be sworn in.
Here is a link to Pressley's petition [PDF].
