The ballots are counted, and results submitted in a first for Polk County in a long, long time: before sundown.

The 2024 Primary Runoff ended this evening with two new County Commissioners having won seats over the incumbents as Michael Gravett and John Paschal took the vote tallies in the countywide races.

Gravett defeated incumbent Jordan Hubbard in the runoff with a tally of 1,416 votes to 773 for the District 1 seat. Hubbard will serve out the rest of the year after his appointment in February.

He took over for Commissioner Scotty Tillery, who passed away at the beginning of the year.

Commissioner Ray Carter will also finish out his term in December after falling to Paschal in the runoff. Paschal took the top vote total of 1,597 to 571 in the District 3 race.

The two races were the only ones leftover from the May 21 Primary for the Republican Party ballot. Since no Democrats ran for any of the seats, Gravett and Paschal are automatically the winners on the November ballot for the general and presidential election this fall.

One person who will have a challenge on that ballot is Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. The overall vote tally with 50% of precincts reporting across the 14th District had Polk County’s Shawn Harris taking the primary race over Clarence Blalock.

Harris won Polk County’s vote in the runoff race 415 to 85.

Tonight’s primary runoff results took in around 2,689 votes in all, and was completed in record time for the local office. Elections Director Noah Beck noted that Polk was the second in the state to submit the early voting results just after 7 p.m.

All of the tallies were sent onward to the Secretary of State’s office by 7:52 p.m., the eighth office in the state to finish up for the night.

“We continue to make progress on ensuring our election results are submitted in a timely and correct manner with the Secretary of State’s office,” Beck said. “The fact that we were able to get them in just behind the office in Richmond County is a testament to the hard work of the employees and volunteers who make the transition from voting to counting as smooth as possible.”

Election results are currently preliminary, and won’t be finalized until the Board of Elections certifies the count, the Secretary of State’s office gives its approval and a full audit is completed.

Polk is one of a handful of counties that conducts a full audit of the tallies to reconcile a machine count with printouts of each ballots after they are cast by voters.