Sheriff John Q. Williams was re-elected overwhelmingly on Tuesday, while commissioners Melissa Link and Carol Myers also kept their seats by wide margins, and Stephanie Johnson won an open seat on the commission.
With all but a handful of provisional ballots counted, Williams defeated Tommy Dorsey with 65% of the vote in a decisive Democratic primary. There is no Republican candidate in November.
Link kept her intown District 2 commission seat over Jason Jacobs 68% to 32%. Myers won even bigger in District 8 on the Eastside, with 72% compared to Sidney “Mama Sid” Waters’ 28%. In the open District 6 seat—the Atlanta Highway area—that Jesse Houle is vacating, Johnson defeated Rashe Malcolm 58% to 42%.
J.P. Lemay will be the county’s new tax commissioner, replacing Toni Meadow, after winning 62% to 38% over Brant Spratlin. And Michael Eberhart won the race to succeed coroner Sonny Wilson over William C. Gaulden by a 60-point margin. Neither race has a Republican candidate in November.
The District 2 school board race in East Athens was extremely close, with incumbent Claudia Butts and Mary P. Bagby edging out former member Kirenna Gallagher to go to a runoff.
In the 10th Congressional District Democratic primary, Lexy Doherty won 62% of the vote in Athens on her way to defeating Jessica Fore with 59% of the vote districtwide. Doherty will face Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Collins in November.
State Sen. Frank Ginn (R-Danielsville) dispatched primary challenger Ross Harvin with 62% of the vote, including 80% among Athens Republicans.
State Rep. Marcus Wiedower (R-Watkinsville) won 83% of the vote both in Clarke County and districtwide against GOP challenger John Michael Grigsby.
On the Democratic side, Melanie Miller won 82% of the vote both in Clarke County and districtwide over Rickie Glenn, earning the right to face state Rep. Trey Rhodes (R-Greensboro) in six months.
Athens native and former Democratic congressman John Barrow lost his bid to unseat Georgia Supreme Court Justice Andrew Pinson, winning 45% of the vote to Pinson’s 55%.
Turnout was a little under 14,000 out of 70,000 registered active voters in Clarke County, or about 20%. That’s less than the typical 30% for a May election, but there was not a high-profile race like mayor, governor or senator on the ballot this year.
Local election officials reported some problems with voters showing up at the wrong precincts. The Athens-Clarke County Board of Elections changed precinct lines last year for the first time in at least three decades, as well as some voting locations.
At a meeting Tuesday afternoon, BOE Chair Rocky Raffle brought up an issue regarding a police officer stationed outside the Timothy Road Elementary polling place. He said city and school officials had agreed not to post law enforcement at polling locations, presumably to avoid intimidating voters.
In addition, the state’s My Voter Page website crashed for about 45 minutes Tuesday afternoon. Gabriel Sterling, the chief operating officer for the Georgia secretary of state’s office, said the vendor that runs the website did not anticipate so many people trying to use it.
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