The June 17 special primary for two Georgia Public Service Commission seats drew just 2% of Bulloch County’s active, registered voters in 16 days of early voting plus one final Election Day in which all 16 of the county’s voting precincts were staffed for 12 hours. Statewide, this election decided a two-candidate Republican race but leaves a runoff for the Democratic Party’s nomination for one PSC seat.

State election law allows that runoff to be preceded by just five in-person early voting days, Friday-Monday, July 7-11. Bulloch County’s early voting would be conducted, as usual, at the Elections Office in the County Annex, 113 North Main St., Suite 201, Statesboro, during office hours. But those 16 traditional Bulloch County’s precinct voting places would then have to open from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. for Election Day voters on Tuesday, July 15 – unless the Bulloch County Board of Elections and Registration invokes a legal clause that allows the county to be reduce its voting places to a single Election Day precinct for a one-party runoff in a special circumstance. That circumstance is that fewer than 1% of the county’s registered voters participated in the affected political party’s original primary, Election Supervisor Shontay Jones noted Friday.

As explained further below, less than 1% of Bulloch voters participated in the Democratic Party primary, considered separately from the Republican primary.

‘Church Precinct’ – Not Annex

If the Democratic runoff in Bulloch County is consolidated to one precinct voting place for the July 15 Election Day, that place won’t be the County Annex, despite its use for the five days of early voting. Under the law, the consolidated Election Day voting place has to be the actual Election Day precinct poll where someone would if their home address were the Bulloch County Courthouse, Jones said.

So that means the one voting place on July 15 would be the social hall at Statesboro Primitive Baptist Church, where residents of the “Church Precinct” usually vote.

Jones indicated that she has provided information about all of this to County Attorney Jeff Akins, as well as to the Board of Elections and Registration.

That three-member board – Chair Theresa Jackson, Jim Benton and William Daughtry – is expected to take up that possibility when they meet at 1:30 p.m. Monday, June 23. Jones explains that while her title is “election supervisor” the board members together are officially Bulloch’s election “superintendent,” and only they have the authority to make a decision like this.

But she will cite the reduction in the county’s costs to staff one precinct versus 16 as a reason for the decision, and hopes to present an estimate of the potential savings next week.

“There is a code section that refers to the type of election that we’re going to have now, just meaning very low voter turnout has cost counties statewide a lot of money to conduct these elections with low voter turnout, which is, again, beyond our control. …,” Jones said Friday. “If we have just one party on the ballot, the code section states that if less than 1% of the total registered voters come out to vote, then we can opt in to only open up one precinct for Election Day.”

She forwarded the reporter a notice about this that had been posted to a state discussion board by another county’s election official on June 3, showing that officials in some counties were already thinking forward to the possibility when early voting started for the off-season PSC primary. Jones also presented the idea during the previous Bulloch County Board of Elections and Registration meeting, June 9.

Primary results

Bulloch County’s election results from the June 17 primary were a little different from the statewide results in terms of who received the most votes for one seat.

Statewide, in the Republican primary for the District 2 PSC seat, incumbent Tim Echols captured 75.8% of the votes to 24.2% for Republican challenger Lee Muns. So Echols will  advance to the Nov. 4  general election facing Democratic challenger Alicia M. Johnson, now her party’s nominee after appearing unopposed on the Democratic primary ballot.

Statewide, in the Democratic primary for the District 3 PSC seat, Keisha Sean Waites garnered just over 46% of the votes, Peter Hubbard 33.3% and Robert Jones almost 20.7%. So the runoff is between Waites and Hubbard for this seat, and the winner will go into the November general election to challenge Republican incumbent Fitz Johnson, who was unopposed on his party’s ballot.

Statewide, turnout was 2.9%, with 214,667 voters participating out of 7,446,040 registered and counted as “active,” as shown on the Secretary of State’s Office election results website Friday, but with the results not yet certified. Bulloch County had 997 voters participate, or 1.99% of its 50,122 active registered voters. The state uses “active” registration to calculate turnout, not considering “inactive”  voters who haven’t cast ballots in the last two election cycles.

For the legal clause the county Election Board will consider invoking, participation in the Democratic primary alone  would be considered, Jones said. With 416 Bulloch voters choosing the Democratic ballot in last week’s primary, they were 0.83% of the county’s  active registered voters, or 0.76% of the 55,045 county total registered voters, less than 1% in either case.

In Bulloch County in the PSC District 2 Republican primary, Echols led with 441 votes to Muns’ 134 votes, their percentages here being similar to those statewide.

But in the PSC District 3 Democratic race, although Waites also placed first in Bulloch with 167 votes, Jones, not Hubbard came in second. Jones got 101 votes and Hubbard 89 votes here. Their Bulloch County vote percentages were 46.8% for Waites; 28.3% Jones and 24.9% Hubbard.