A request for a recount of the November general election by Austin mayoral candidate Carmen Llanes Pulido has been rejected, city officials said.

Llanes Pulido had filed a request Thursday for a recount of votes in the city’s 11 precincts in Williamson County. Officials said that under state law, a recount must be jurisdiction-wide. Austin stretches across Travis County to Williamson and Hays.

Llanes Pulido has until Monday to decide whether he will appeal. She told KUT she was considering her options.

“The particular sections of the code that they are referring to are inconsistent with what we were told by the legal representative in the secretary of state’s office,” she said. “Because we asked this specific question several times before submitting this petition.”

Incumbent Mayor Kirk Watson received the most votes in the Nov. 5 election, but he needed a majority of votes, 50 percent plus one vote, to win outright and avoid a runoff with Llanes Pulido. He declared victory last weekwith only 13 votes to spare.

Llanes Pulido said because the margin was razor thin, she felt the community deserved reassurance that every vote was being counted correctly. She cited irregularities in the vote count.

Earlier this week, Travis County reported finding 75 provisional ballots which had not been fully processed. Twenty were added to the county total – 13 of which included votes in the mayoral race.

“I know how much work goes into ensuring accuracy and fairness,” Llanes Pulido said. “So this is not a criticism of any of these leaders, but a desire to have a clearer picture of what really happened.”

In a written statement, Watson again declared victory and said the demand for a recount was “sowing doubt in the democratic process and creating chaos.”

“All this does is cost more money, waste more time and, even if a recount results in my score falling below 50%, it would probably only be by a few votes,” he said. -he declared. “Austin’s mayor should seek to create stability, especially at a time of instability in other areas of government. We should put the campaign behind us and get back to work. Hopefully, now that the effort to deny the election was found defective, we can.

Llanes Pulido told KUT she is not interested in changing the outcome unless that is what the numbers show.

“I’m going to respect the election results,” she said.

The director of the nonprofit Go Austin/Vamos Austin, Llanes Pulido, spoke in favor of solving the city’s affordability problems and criticized the city’s behavior. recent developments in the land use planning code.

She also says the city needs to do more to combat climate change, improve public infrastructure and transportation, and help child care providers.

“I hope this administration — this mayor — can look at this result and see that this slim margin says something,” she said. “It says we need to come together and stop excluding people we disagree with. We need to be brave and honest, engage in dialogue, and work with our opposition to find better solutions for Austin.”