VALDOSTA — Two runoffs in Lowndes County were quickly settled Tuesday.

Chris Buescher overcame incumbent G. Edward “Eddie” Smith in the race for Lowndes County Board of Education, District 7. Buescher received 388 votes to Smith’s 120 to win the seat.

In the Lowndes County Commission District 5 race, Michael Smith received 999 votes to Tommy Willis’s 749 to clinch the Republican nomination. In the Nov. 5 general election, Smith will face Democrat Ron J. Bythwood, who ran unopposed in the Democratic primary May 21.

Both runoffs were the result of voting on May 21. In the District 5 County Commission race, voters chose from among five candidates, and in the District 7 School Board race, they chose from among three. Under Georgia law, a candidate must receive more than half of the votes cast to win, and no one did in those two races. That led to runoffs between the top two vote-getters in each race.

Because each of the two races affected voters in only part of the county, not all precincts voted — and some precincts voted in one race and not the other.

Polls closed at 7 p.m., and all the votes in the school board race were counted by 7:50 p.m. It took about another half-hour to complete the count in the county commission race.

Turnout was 4.96%, according to Lowndes County Elections Supervisor Deb Cox. While Lowndes County has more than 85,000 registered voters, only 38,745 were eligible to vote in those two specific races. Of those, 1,820 actually cast ballots, some during early voting last week and others at their voting precincts on Tuesday.

wCox said there are three provisional ballots and three military ballots still unaccounted for.

Provisional ballots are ones where there is a concern about the voter’s eligibility that cannot be resolved at the poll. The voter is allowed to cast a ballot that is kept separate until the question is resolved later in the week; if the voter is deemed eligible, it’s counted and if he is ineligible, it’s not.

The ballots of deployed servicemen are given extra time after the election to arrive by mail. State law requires they be accepted until 5 p.m. Friday, so Board of Elections staff plan to meet at 4 p.m. Friday to certify the provisional ballots.