VALDOSTA —
The election for District 5 Commissioner between candidates Jody Hall and John Page ended too close to call Tuesday night, according to the Lowndes County Board of Elections. The outcome of the race will be determined by provisional and military ballots in the next 72 hours and will be certified Friday.
With the 1,779 votes from all districts counted, Page is in the lead with 51.94 percent, leaving Hall behind at 48.06, a margin separated by only 69 votes.
Supervisor of Elections Deb Cox estimates about 100 provisional votes remain to be counted as well as about 15 from military voters overseas.
The Elections Board’s goal is to have a certified winner Friday by about 4 p.m.
“This happened the last time we had this election, between John Page and John Huff,” Cox said. “And the provisionals were the tie-breaker.”
Page pulled away from Hall early in the election, but the gap widened as the votes from Hahira and Valdosta were tallied.
“Jody pulled strong in Hahira, and I pulled strong in the city,” Page said. “It has been a long summer and a hard race.”
The winner of this election will be the first to occupy the District 5 seat, one of two seats added to the Lowndes County Board of Commissioners earlier in the year.
While this is a run-off election for both Republican challengers, there is no Democratic candidate also running for the seat. These circumstances will allow Lowndes County voters to decide the winner of the race prior to Nov. 6.
“I think this shows the people here are very conservative and that they want a commissioner who will be politically and fiscally conservative,” Page said Monday. “Overwhelmingly the people in Lowndes County want lower taxes.”
Both Page and Hall hoped to see as big a voter turn-out as possible, given that run-off elections usually see low numbers.
“Well, I don’t think we could have done any more,” Hall said. “We just needed 69 more people out to vote. I’m not mad, not anything like that, and I’m not through. There’s other ways to serve the people of Lowndes County. They say it’s too close to call, but I don’t think (provisional votes) are going to sway anything.”
For more on this story and other local news, subscribe to The Valdosta Daily Times e-Edition, or our print edition.
