HALL COUNTY – Richard Higgins secured a sufficient number of votes in Tuesday’s contest for Chairman of the Hall County Commission to claim a second term and avoid a run-off.
Incumbent Higgins collected nearly 60-percent of the vote while challengers Bobby Banks and Judy Sartain shared the remaining votes.
To win an election outright a candidate must receive fifty-percent of the vote plus one. Under Georgia law if no one receives that minimum number of votes the top two vote-getters face each other in a run-off; that run-off is scheduled for August 11th.
Higgins told WDUN’s Mitch Clarke during election coverage that being the incumbent might have been a difference-maker in this election. “You know, we’ve had such a tumultuous last couple of months with the COVID-19 and the other things that are going on in our country…and we’ve got a lot of tough things ahead of us and decisions to make, so I think maybe they (the voters) felt like the incumbent would be better equipped to handle that.”
Additional absentee ballots were being calculated overnight by the Hall County Elections Office. The additional absentee votes are not expected to change the outcome of the election, but please check back in the morning for updated numbers.
http://accesswdun.com/article/2020/6/910549/aaa