SATIRE: This is parody. Not a real news report.
McALLEN — Hidalgo County elections officials announced Thursday that the county’s much-celebrated 69 percent surge in early voting turnout — 68,794 ballots cast in four days, up 28,204 from 2022 — has been formally traced to its root cause: one (1) additional mail ballot, bringing the mail-in total to 3,564, exactly one envelope ahead of the last midterm.
“We spent all night running the numbers,” said Elections Administrator Dolores Peña, gesturing at a corkboard with a single red string connecting 65,230 in-person voters to one manila envelope. “It was right there in front of us. The 28,201 people who stood in line outside Lark Library were, statistically speaking, just punctuation. The stamp is the sentence. Actually, come to think of it, it was a Forever stamp, so in a way it was always going to be the sentence.”
Officials confirmed that the extra envelope, postmarked from a retiree in North McAllen who reportedly “just felt like it,” will be enshrined in a climate-controlled display case in the county elections office, next to a plaque reading “The Ballot That Carried Hidalgo County’s Entire Civic Renaissance, Allegedly.”
‘We Tried to Thank the 65,230 In-Person Voters, But Honestly, What Would We Even Say’
The county had initially planned a press conference celebrating the massive in-person turnout, which swelled from 37,027 in 2022 to 65,230 this year, with lines snaking through the parking lot of Lark Library while campaign workers held signs and passersby sold aguas frescas to the queue. That event was downgraded to a laminated flyer taped to a door.
“Look, we love the line people. We do,” said Deputy Administrator Rick Caballero, squinting into the sun outside the Lark Library site. “But one of them is one person, and the envelope is a trend. It’s plus-one. Plus-one is growth you can frame.”
Caballero noted that Hidalgo County’s Sunday hours end at 4 p.m. “so the envelope doesn’t get tired,” while Cameron County keeps sites open until 8 p.m. Saturday, a scheduling difference officials described as “the envelope’s decision, not ours.”
At press time, officials were negotiating with the U.S. Postal Service to have the one extra ballot declared a historical landmark, and Cameron County — up 49 percent but with a mail-in increase of zero — was reportedly “devastated” to learn its entire surge was done the old-fashioned way, by humans, in the heat, on purpose.
