Senate Race 18 & Rep Race 43 Still Undecided - Liquor Passes

While all twelve precincts have been counted and tallied and most local races have been decided with reasonable certainty, the State Senate race 18 between Giles Ward & Steven Kilgore and the State Representative Race 43 between Russ Nowell & Michael Evans will be decided by yet to be counted absentee ballots.

The Senate race includes voters in Winston, Neshoba and Leake Counties. As of 3 am, Ward held the slightest of leads with 8170 votes to Kilgore's 8086. This total includes absentee votes in Neshoba but absentee votes are yet to be included from Winston & Leake Counties.

The Representative race includes Winston, parts of Kemper and Noxubee Counties. As of 3 am, Democrat Michael Evans held a 4034 to 3883 lead over incumbent Russ Nowell.

In this election, absentee ballots must be hand counted due to ballot errors on some paper ballots. This has slowed the process to a crawl and results may not be known until later today.

In other local races, Jason Pugh took the Sheriff's race by defeating incumbent Randy Thomas (R) and Lawrence Estes (I) with 51% of the vote. Larry Woodward (D) defeated independent Renee Hampton with 68.6% of the vote for Winston County Tax Assessor/Collector. For District 1 Supervisor, James "Burr" Warner (D) handily defeated Robert Combs(R) and Tim Rogers (I) to fill the seat vacated by Jerry Estes. In District 4, incumbent Gloria Turnipseed (D) easily defeated David Mills (I) and Ronnie Weeks (R) for the Supervisor's seat. For Constable West Post, Ed Hunt (D) defeated Keith Alexander (R) while Roy Dale Fulton (D) defeated Brian Williamson (R) for Constable East Post. Other local offices were uncontested.

Winston County voters followed statewide trends as they failed to pass Initiative 26 (personhood definition) but supported Initiative 27 requiring voter ID and Initiative 31 limiting government's eminent domain powers.

Locally in a tight vote, the referendum to allow the sale of liquor in Winston county passed by a vote of 3852 to 3269 or 54% of the vote.

You can see the most current vote totals for the County at http://winstonresults.blogspot.com

and statewide results at NEMS360.