District 3 Supervisor candidate Andy Williamson can once again start campaigning for November’s general election.
Final votes, with absentees and affidavits, have Williamson beyond the required 50%-plus-one-vote threshold necessary to win the three-person Republican primary.
It’s been a bit of a journey to get there, though.
Williamson was the apparent winner on election night Aug. 8 Republican primary, pulling in enough votes to defeat Tony Hannah and Chad Frasher outright.
However, affidavits and absentees that were working their way through the mail appeared to pull the rug out from under Williamson, leaving him two votes shy of the margin necessary to win.
Now, Williamson is back on top and headed to the general election, where he will face independent Christopher Moore. The winner then will replace John Holliman, who did not run for reelection, on the board of supervisors.
The issue that caused the fluctuating results had to do with write-in votes, according to Lowndes County Deputy Circuit Clerk Anne Marie Higgins. There were 17 write-ins, and they were enough to change the percentage outcome just enough to cost Williamson his outright victory.
“The system we use for our machines defaults to using write-ins (when it figures the percentages),” Higgins said. “The state system doesn’t account for (write-ins).”
The problem came to light when the county uploaded its results to the Secretary of State’s office, she said. Mail-in absentees that were still outstanding did not arrive by the deadline.
Williamson needed 1,093 to avoid a runoff. According to the final results, he got 1,100, or 50.37%. Hannah got 681 (31.18%) and Chad Frasher got 403 (18.45%).
Williamson told The Dispatch Wednesday afternoon he was “honored and humbled” by the outcome.
“It’s very rare to have an outright winner in a primary with three candidates,” Williamson said. “I’m making a promise to take care of the Hannah supporters and the Frasher supporters and work hard for them. I’m going to take care of them just like I am (my supporters).”
Hannah told The Dispatch he wasn’t sure what to say.
“I appreciate my voters sticking beside through all this,” Hannah said. “It’s just hard to understand how all this process works, but I’ve learned a lot and I’ve grown, and I’m going to come out a better person for it.”
The general election is Nov. 7.
Brian Jones is the local government reporter for Columbus and Lowndes County.
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