Tuesday’s Democratic primary runoff between Quordiniah Lockley and Zach Patterson will decide who faces Republican nominee Tommy McKenzie, the sitting selectman at-large, on June 19.
It’s an important vote, but not everyone can take part.
Anyone who voted in the Republican primary on May 1 is ineligible to cast a ballot on Tuesday.
Those who voted in the first Democratic primary and those who did not vote at all on May 1 are allowed to vote Tuesday.
It is still not clear how vote totals will be announced Tuesday night.
The computer programming and scanning process for the May 1 election, overseen by the Jackson office of Omaha, Neb.-based Election Systems and Software, did not allow for ward-by-ward results to be announced in citywide races.
That meant all results were announced at 11 p.m., and without updates after each ward had been counted, there were no running totals in the mayoral and selectman at-large primaries.
City Clerk Servia Fortenberry said last week the city would use the same process for counting votes for the runoff, with one scanner reading ballots and feeding results to a computer.
She did not respond to attempts Friday and Saturday to clarify whether the programming for Tuesday would allow ward-by-ward results to be reported Tuesday night.
Municipal Democratic executive committee chairman Vernell Simmons said he did not know how the totals would be reported.
“I won’t know until we get there Tuesday night,” he said.
There is a recent precedent for the all-at-once results. In November 2006, when Patterson beat incumbent Mayor Tom Walman, the tallying process, overseen then by Diebold, did not result in ward-by-ward results.
As in the primary elections May 1, Diebold officials told city election staff in 2006 that their programming and equipment would not allow ward-by-ward results.
