House District 125 Ballots to be Counted by Hand Tonight

House District 125 ballots in today's runoff election are being counted by hand.

Voters went to the polls today for Georgia's presidential preference primary. But there was a separate runoff election for the vacant House District 125 seat.

The runoff between Gary Richardson and CJ Pearson was needed when neither candidate failed to get 50%, plus one, required to win the February 13th election outright.

The election is to fill the seat vacated by Barry Fleming. Fleming resigned to accept an appointment to the Superior Court bench in Columbia County.

From the Columbia County Board of Commission:

"Due to an early morning error in uploading the ballot for the Special Election Runoff for State House of Representatives-District 125, Columbia County officials are requesting the Columbia County Board of Elections to do a 100% hand count of the ballots before certifying the election results, regardless of the outcome."

It's not known how long it will take to tabulate the results

President Joe Biden has clinched the Democratic nomination after easily winning the presidential preference primary today in Georgia.  Former President Donald Trump easily won the Republican preference primary and is expected to clinch the Republican nomination tonight as well.  Trump had 1,078 delegates at the beginning of the day.  He needs 1,215 to lock up the nomination.  It appears though there will be a rematch in November between the two for the Oval Office.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said low voter turnout for the presidential preference primary is believed to be the result of the lack of competition in the races.  In the end, he expects turnout to be 9 to 10% of the state's registered voters.  He said that compares to more than 2 million who turned out for the presidential primaries in 2020.

Georgia was one of 4 states holding presidential preference primaries today, along with Washington, Mississippi and Hawaii.