Most elections too close to call
Significant leads developed in the State House District 13, chief magistrate races
Local races may still be in limbo as absentee ballot counting stalled Tuesday night because of technical issues.
The election day and early voting totals were in relatively early, but over 11,000 absentee ballots still weren’t tallied as of 1 a.m.
On the Republican ballot, State Rep. Katie Dempsey looked like a solid winner to keep her seat. As of late Tuesday, Dempsey led Republican challenger Brad Barnes by 1,755 votes to his 499.
Another race that appeared to have a solid frontrunner is the Floyd County Chief Magistrate’s race. Incumbent Gene Richardson led with 4,070 votes compared to challenger Justin Hight’s 2,622.
What may be the longestrunning sheriff’s race in Floyd County history was still inconclusive, but Dave Roberson was the clear leader in the primary election day results.
Roberson had 2,841 votes to Tom Caldwell’s 1,622 and
Ronnie Kilgo’s 962, enough to avoid a runoff if the outstanding absentee ballots maintain the trend.
One race that’s neck and neck in the counted ballots is the clerk of Superior
Court race. Incumbent Barbara Penson had a lead of around 300 votes over challenger Joe Costolnick. Penson brought in 2,749 to Colstolnick’s 2,446 as of late Tuesday.
On the Democratic ballot, Floyd County voters joined the state majority to choose longtime environmental advocate Daniel Blackman as their nominee to run for the Georgia Public Service Commission’s District 4 seat. He will face face veteran Republican Commissioner Lauren “Bubba” Mcdonald in November.
As for presidential preference primary, Floyd County added 5,080 votes to President Donald Trump’s total and 1,029 votes to give former Vice President Joe Biden the Democratic nomination.
Floyd County voters also mirrored state voters and selected John Ossoff as their choice for the Democratic Party candidate to run against Sen. David Perdue in November.
There were several issues in counting the massive number of absentee ballots cast in the race. Chief Elections Clerk Robert Brady said they had technical complications with the ballot counting machines.
A number of times through the evening, local elections officials were on the phone with the state’s tech support — and were again at just after midnight. The machines appeared to not want to read some ballots and Brady attributed it to having two contests condensed into one day.
Brady said there were several problems Tuesday morning, but he described them as annoyances, rather than full blown issues.
“Nobody turned anybody away and nothing caused long lines,” Brady said.
More than one precinct opened late and one piece of voting equipment had a low battery and had to be replaced with another piece of equipment, Brady said.