Wednesday, June 18, 2025–10:10 a.m.

-David Crowder, WRGA News-

A runoff election for the District Three post on the Georgia Public Service Commission will be held on July 15.

Keisha Sean Waites and Peter Hubbard were the top vote getters, but neither received the 50% plus one needed to avoid a runoff.

Due to the low voter turnout, it is likely only one precinct will be open for the runoff in Floyd County, according to board of elections chair Jerry Lee.

“The statute says that if you have less than 1 percent for a particular race, you only have to open one precinct,” he said. “Considering there was such a low turnout, obviously, we would like to save the taxpayers the cost of opening 19 precincts and having people just sitting around. So, we are going to open the one precinct, and it will be the one that is housed at the library.”

There will likely only be one week of early voting, which would be July 7- 11 at the elections center on East 12th Street.

“The week before that is obviously the July 4 holiday,” Lee said. “With that holiday, it would be difficult to have any election during that time. Of course, we have to wait on the state to get us our ballot project, and with the short turnaround between today and getting that project set up, plus we have to do L+A [location and accuracy] testing on the equipment we use—that takes time as well.”

Lee was surprised by one aspect of Tuesday’s turnout.

“We had a stronger turnout on Election Day than I would have expected,” he said. “Typically, we see 40 to 50 percent of our votes cast during early voting, and then the other half on Election Day. We went into Election Day with 353, and then we picked up another 900 votes, roughly.”

The winner of the runoff will face Incumbent Republican Fritz Johnson in November.

 Lee was a guest on Wednesday’s First News with Doug Walker on WRGA.