Georgia’s long awaited general primary and presidential preference primary elections are on the books! Complete results are posted on the Secretary of State’s website at www.sos.ga.gov. These results are likely to change as some votes were still being counted as of early Wednesday.
In races of local interest –
Dave Roberson emerged as the front runner in the Floyd County Sheriff race with 52 percent of the vote. Tom Caldwell received 30 percent, while Ronnie Kilgo tallied 18 percent.
Gene Richardson won his bid for re-election as the Chief Magistrate in Floyd County with 61 percent of the vote. Justin Hight, his challenger, received 39 percent of votes cast in that race.
Barbara Penson will continue on with her bid for another term as the Floyd County Clerk of Superior Court. She received 53 percent of the vote, while challenger Joe Costolnick picked up 47 percent. Penson, a Republican, will go on to face Democrat Moriah Medina in the fall.
Katie Dempsey was re-elected to her District 13 post with the Georgia House Representatives with 78 percent of votes. Challenger Brad Barnes picked up 22 percent.
It appears that Marjorie Greene and Dr. John Cowan are headed for a run-off election to determine who will represent the Republican party in the race for the 14th Congressional District seat. Greene received 39 percent of Tuesday’s vote, while Cowan nabbed 17 percent district-wide. The run-off election has been set for August 11th.
Dr. Tom Rees, Chair of Floyd County’s Board of Elections and Registration,
asserts that there were a few minor glitches locally on Election Day. This was mostly because poll workers were getting used to new voting machines.
Tuesday’s election was a good ‘trial run’ for the general election coming up in November, adds Dr. Rees.
Dr. Rees also indicated that the local elections office received about 12,000 absentee ballots for this election, that’s six times as much as the previous high of around 2,000 during the last presidential election. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger encouraged each Georgian to vote absentee in this election due to concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic.