Val Verde County ballot board meets to count runoff ballots

Val Verde County’s Early Voting Ballot Board met at 9 a.m. Tuesday in the Elections Room on the third floor at 400 Pecan Street in Del Rio to qualify and count the early voting ballots from the June 13 Del Rio mayoral runoff.

The board’s job is to review early voting ballots and determine which ones qualify to be counted under Texas election procedure before they are added to the official total. In Val Verde County, the Elections Department is administered by the County Clerk’s Office, and the county Tax Assessor serves as voter registrar, placing both the ballot-processing work and voter rolls under local election administration.

The June 13 runoff followed a May 2 city election in which no mayoral candidate won a majority. Certified results from that race showed Alvaro “Al” Arreola leading the six-candidate field with 831 votes, Efrain V. Valdez with 793, and Jim DeReus third with 775. Val Verde County certified 21,433 registered voters for the May 2 City of Del Rio election, with 2,741 ballots cast and turnout at 12.79 percent.

Saturday, June 13, 2026, was the runoff date for local runoff elections arising from the May 2 uniform election date, and early voting by personal appearance ran from June 1 through June 9. In the unofficial June 13 count, Arreola led Valdez by nine votes, 931 to 922. The county clerk said 1,859 ballots were cast in the runoff, including 1,853 from Del Rio residents, while 67 mail-in ballots remained outstanding. Because the margin was so close, the county clerk said the ballots would be manually recounted, though Valdez would need to petition for a recount.