TYLERTOWN — Walthall County voters joined other Senate District 39 voters Tuesday in casting most of their ballots for the two candidates headed to a runoff on Oct. 13.
County election officials said the special election was a good chance to see how elections will work with virus precautions in place before the general election on Nov. 3.
Jason Barrett and Bill Sones, who are headed to the runoff, topped the results in Walthall County, with Barrett getting 143 votes (30.3%) and Sones getting 106 votes (22.5%).
Districtwide, Sones led the way by about 200 votes over Barrett. The rest of the vote in Walthall County included Beth Brown, 86; Michael Smith, 39, Ben Johnson, 26; Josh Davis, 22; Prentiss Smith, 21; Mike Campbell, 15; and Cindy Bryan, 14.
There were 489 votes cast across the nine Walthall precincts included in District 39, including 17 absentee ballots that had not been counted as of early afternoon Wednesday.
“It sounds like it was a good trial run for the general election,” Supervisor Ken Craft said. “The low turnout gave the pollworkers a chance to get used to what it will be like.”
“Yes, and everything seemed to go pretty smoothly,” Election Commission Chair Beth Cowart told supervisors.
With the Senate runoff — as well as a general election with many more voters expected — coming up, Cowart and Circuit Clerk Vernon Alford brought requests to finalize some of the fine details for those elections.
Cowart said the state had authorized $50 hazard pay for pollworkers in addition to the regular daily salary, which the state will prepay to the county if the additional pay is approved by the county and included in the supervisors’ meeting minutes.
The provision also includes an allowance for an additional pollworker to help clean surfaces in between voters, which the state will also prepay to the county.
The extra pay could be vital for the county, because “pollworkers are getting hard to find,” Alford said.
The general election will bring another change to procedures as, well.
Cowart said the resolution committee will be called on for more service than usual, because they will receive absentee ballots this year, rather than absentee ballots being sent to the precincts where the absentee voter would have voted.
The committee will be able to begin processing the absentee ballots as soon as the polls open on Nov. 3.
Given the increased workload in a room together, Alford recommended raising the committee members’ pay by $50 each.
“I’m sending out 100 absentee ballots today, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” Alford said.
Monday was the first day that voters could request absentee ballots for the general election.
