Nearly two days after voters made their final choices, the vote counting has concluded.

All but one local challenger lost to incumbents. The one exception was a third rematch between incumbent Fayette County Commissioner Randy Ognio and former commissioner Lee Hearn. Twice before, in 2012 and 2016, Ognio defeated Hearn. The third time was the winner for Hearn, as he edged the two-term Ognio by 196 votes out of 5,428 cast in the District 2 Republican Primary. Hearn is seeking to return to the county commission to which he won a seat in 2008. Ognio upended then-Commissioner Hearn in 2012, and won again in a rematch in 2016.

Hearn will face no Democrat challenger in the November general election, so he is in effect the next District 2 commissioner come Jan. 1, 2021.

Two other commission incumbents — Eric Maxwell and Charles Oddo — beat back Republican challengers for their posts. Oddo won the District 5 at-large post with 70% of the vote, turning back Ann Wittenberg and William “Bill” Yarde. And Maxwell turned back a challenge from political first-timer Sonja Gibson with 78% of the vote.

In November, Maxwell will face Democrat Vickie Butler while Oddo will be opposed by Democrat William Lightle.

Controversy over a new Booth Middle School site and its cost apparently didn’t matter to most of Scott Hollowell’s supporters in the Board of Education District 3 Republican contest. He got 58% of the vote in a 3-way race against former board member Marion Key and Neil Sullivan. Hollowell faces no Democrat opposition in November.

Three incumbent magistrate judges beat back challenges in the non-partisan races that each drew more than 31,000 votes.

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Final non-certified JUNE 9 ELECTION RETURNS

Third count announced 3:30 p.m. June 11

(All ballots counted except 25-30 overseas military votes)

Republican Primary contested races

[(I) is “incumbent”]

Fayette County Commission District 1

Precincts reporting 100%

Sonja Gibson — 886 (22%)

Eric K. Maxwell (I) — 3,083 (78%)

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Fayette County Commission District 2

Precincts reporting 100%

Lee Hearn — 2,812 (52%)

Randy C. Ognio (I) — 2,616 (48%)

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Fayette County Commission District 5 (at-large)

Precincts reporting 100%

Charles W. Oddo (I) — 11,087 (70%)

Ann Wittenberg — 3,424 (22%)

William “Bill” Yarde — 1,280 (8%)

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Fayette Board of Education District 3

Precincts reporting 100%

Scott Hollowell (I) — 2,491 (58%)

Marion Key — 1,334 (31%)

Cornelius “Neil” Sullivan — 485 (11%)

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The District 5 at-large BoE post was an uncontested race.

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NON-PARTISAN MAGISTRATE COURT JUDGE

Post 1

Precincts reporting 100%

Christy Dunkelberger (I) — 17,746 (57%)

Pamela Patterson — 13,646 (43%)

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Post 2

Precincts reporting 100%

Sheila S. Huddleston — 12,366 (40%)

Kathy Brown Valencia (I) — 18,910 (60%)

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Post 4

Precincts reporting 100%

Natalie Ashman — 15,077 (48%)

James A. White (I) — 16,395 (52%)

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State House District 71

(includes northwest slice of Peachtree City north of Ga. Highway 54 and west of Hwy. 74)

Counties/precincts reporting 100%

Marcy Westmoreland Sakrison — 2,276 (41%)

Philip Singleton (I) — 3,258 (59%)

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There are no contested Democrat races for county offices. However, incumbent Democrat District 63 Rep. Debra Bazemore is being challenged in the Democrat Primary by Kenneth “Ken” Kincaid. District 63 includes a large section of eastern Fayette County. It runs from the Fulton County line southward through Fayetteville, ending in Woolsey below Hampton and Hall roads.

Ga. House, District 63

Counties/precincts reporting 100%

Debra Bazemore (I) — 8,422 (74%)

Kenneth “Ken Kincaid — 2,956 (26%)

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[Below are earlier versions of the election returns story.]

UPDATED 7:30 P.M. JUNE 10 — With “hundreds, rather than thousands” of absentee ballots left to tally in contested Fayette County races, one incumbent seems likely to be in the loser’s bracket: Randy Ognio.

The current chairman of the Fayette County Commission, Ognio is trailing challenger Lee Hearn by nearly the same percentage as last night at midnight. Hearn has 52% of the vote, and Ognio has 48%. With only a few hundred ballots left to be counted, Ognio trails by 184 votes. See the tallies below.

It’s a turnabout from 2016 when the incumbent Ognio beat Hearn.

If the gap holds up, Ognio will have a little more than 6 months left to serve on the commission.

Fayette elections officials counted all day today and went home a little after 6 p.m., according to Fayette County Administrator Steve Rapson. “Elections just posted the second set of results. They are very close to completing, however, the volunteer Voter Review Panel decided to go home and resume tomorrow. Numbers remain incomplete, but we are talking hundreds rather than thousands of votes remain at this point. The final votes will be tabulated in the morning and emailed before lunch.”

Rapson described in an email sent a little after 9:30 a.m. what the situation was: “All in person voting results are already reported — that means what occurred yesterday and the past three weeks of early in-person voting here and PTC Library have been reported.

“What is remaining is the mailed in ballots.  Provisional ballots and military/overseas ballots have until Friday to be received. Election estimates we have between 6,000 to 8,000 votes remaining to be counted since we had a heavy influx of ballots coming in all day yesterday until 7 p.m. We hope to have something finalized by the end of the day,” Rapson said earlier today.

In other local races, the incumbents won, some with smaller margins than others. The biggest vote-getters were the three nonpartisan magistrate judge contests. Close to 30,000 voters cast ballots in each of those races.

UPDATED 9:30 A.M. JUNE 10 — Incumbent Fayette County Commissioner Randy Ognio has not lost yet. His challenger Lee Hearn ended the night ahead of Ognio by 126 votes out of 3,780 counted in that race by midnight last night. Hearn led Ognio by 51.7% to 48.3%.

Now we hear that the Fayette County Elections Office is still counting paper ballots, meaning that the Ognio-Hearn contest has not been officially decided yet.

Fayette County Administrator Steve Rapson at 6:44 a.m. on Wednesday said elections board member Darryl Hicks estimated there were between 6,000 to 8,000 votes remaining to be counted due to the heavy influx of ballots coming in all day on election day.

Adding to the dilemma faced by ballot counters was the unusually large number of absentee ballots coming in. That number was estimated to be 16,000, due largely to the Covid-19 pandemic and large numbers of people wanting to vote absentee.

As of 9:30 on June 10, likely the only local contested race with a margin small enough to be overcome with new votes is still a cliffhanger. Ognio may be behind at the time of the tallies reported last night. But at this point — the morning of June 10 — the Ognio-Hearn race is still undecided.

UPDATE 12:25 a.m. — it took hours, but the Fayette County Elections Office posted the first and final vote totals of the night just minutes before midnight.

Fayette County Board of Education member Scott Hollowell won without a runoff in a three-way race. Eric Maxwell and Charles Oddo, both incumbent county commissioners, won reelection easily. And the three incumbent magistrate judges were victorious in their non-partisan races.

But it looks like Fayette Commission Chairman Randy Ognio met his match in a former commissioner he had beaten once before. Lee Hearn led Ognio by a little over a hundred votes, 51.7% to 48.3%.

This primary featured a number of novel difficulties including the novel coronavirus pandemic, novel two-part voting machines (a big touchscreen and a separate printer that produced a paper ballot), and a novel amount of voters who decided to cast thousands of paper absentee ballots for candidates in primaries for the Democrat and Republican parties and in the non-partisan judicial races.

Voter turnout was a little over 12%, with 10,852 ballots cast out of a registered voter total number of 88,758, with many thousands of absentee ballots uncounted.

In neighboring counties, eight of Spalding County’s 16 precincts had been reported by 10:30. In Coweta, the Georgia House of Representatives District 71 Republican Primary was shaping up to be a runaway for the incumbent Philip Singleton. He had tallied 1,506 votes (61.82%) to challenger Marcy Westmoreland Sakrison’s 930 votes (38.18%). And District 63 Rep. Debra Bazemore seems to have easily turned back Democrat Primary challenger Kenneth “Ken” Kincaid. Bazemore had 83.79% of the votes and Kincaid had 16.21%.

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