Election season finally ended in Georgia with voting on Jan. 5 in the U.S. Senate runoff for two seats.
The sigh of relief you hear might be from the courthouse.
Workers in the election office had to deal with an outbreak of COVID-19 (coronavirus) which affected 12 people during early voting, those same workers who work the polls during the election. In addition, a bomb threat was made about the courthouse, unrelated to the election.
“Overall, it went really well,” said Gilmer County Chief Registrar Tammy Watkins. “We had better turnout than I expected.”
A total of 14,847 voters out of 22,781 registered voters cast ballots in the runoff for 65 percent turnout. Early voters accounted for 6,292 votes, mail-in ballots were 2,949 and 5,601 election day voters.
In Gilmer County, Incumbent Republican David Perdue garnered 12,163 votes to Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff’s 2,664 for the U.S. Senate seat. Republican Incumbent Senator Kelly Loeffler received 12,132 votes in Gilmer County to Democratic challenger Rev. Raphael Warnock’s 2,697 in the race for her seat.
Both Perdue and Loeffler lost statewide and have conceded the races.
In the runoff for the Public Service Commission District 4 seat incumbent Republican Lauren ‘Bubba’ McDonald received 12,090 votes to Democratic challenger’s Daniel Blackman’s 2,537.
McDonald was declared the winner statewide.
All results were certified Monday, Jan. 11.
“As far as our results, they are official and complete,” she said.
Watkins said the count on election night went well.
“It was great,” she said. “It was smooth. We were out of here by 10:30 p.m.”
She said the bomb threat did not affect the process, because the sheriff’s office had someone in custody before they had to evacuate.
“I think the sheriff’s department did a wonderful job,” she said.
As for the coronavirus affecting workers, Watkins said they were able to pull enough people in to get the job done.
“We scrambled to get enough workers,” she said. “I can’t thank them enough.”
No elections are scheduled for 2021 for the Gilmer County elections office.
“We are going to play catch-up this year with all the stuff we put aside,” Watkins said.
Mostly this will consist of updating computers and doing away with using hand-written cards except as archives.