New face will join McDuffie council

McDuffie County will usher in a new face and an old one in January, after voters defeated one incumbent and returned another to office last week.

Incumbent Democrat Sammie Wilson Sr. held onto Seat A in District 1 of the County Commission by defeating challenger Lewis A. Harbeson Jr. Wilson received 1,270 total votes, an overwhelming 62.7 percent of the total vote, while Harbeson only managed 753 votes, or 37.3 percent.

"Insuring a better tomorrow through economic development. I want to bring jobs to the economy. My main focus is on jobs," Wilson said of his intentions for office. "I appreciate the people supporting me."

He begins his third term in January.

In the other contested race in McDuffie County, Mike Love defeated incumbent Brian Barmore for the Board of Education District 7 seat. Love picked up 784 votes, 62.1 percent of the total vote. Barmore rounded up 479 votes, or 37.9 percent.

Love was eager to take over a position that he felt needed some reform. "Basically, I just wanna be a voice in my district," he said. "The reason I ran for the board was that I had problems with the school system. I had a problem, and I went to the school board, but I didn't feel like I was being represented. The person who sits on our board needs to represent our district."

Despite inclement weather and poor driving conditions, many residents of McDuffie County still made it to the polls to vote on Tuesday. Of the 12,319 registered voters in McDuffie County, 5,209, or 42.2 percent, actually voted.

Tiffany Neal, elections supervisor for McDuffie County, said, "The turnout was great for the weather that we had."

GOP Chairman of McDuffie County, Dexter Lovins, agreed. "We had a good turnout," he said.

Georgia was the first state to exclusively use an the electronic voting system. Despite reports on CNN and ABC that the new machines were slowing down lines and causing confusion, Neal said she knew of no complaints regarding the machines in McDuffie County.

"We had no problems," she said.

However, Lovins did have complaints, but they weren't really with the machines.

"The only problem I saw was that the people hadn't read the amendments ahead of time, so when they got there, they took a lot of time reading the amendments," he said. "There were some lines."