NATCHEZ — Residents in Senate District 37 may have to wait until sometime Monday to congratulate their senator.

The race between Republican Melanie Sojourner and Democrat Bob M. Dearing was too close to call on election night since only 494 votes separated the two candidates.

Approximately 2,000 absentee ballots were uncounted Wednesday morning.

Counts were under way in all four of the district’s counties — Pike, Amite, Franklin and Adams.

But only Franklin County had completed counting by the end of the day.

In Franklin County, 288 absentee ballots were cast. Of those, 156 were for Sojourner and 132 were for Dearing.

The Franklin County absentees increased Sojourner’s lead to 518 votes.

The Franklin County absentees brought the total of counted ballots for each candidate in that county to 1,774 for Sojourner and 1,440 for Dearing.

Adams County has a total of 680 absentee ballots and hopes to be done by Friday.

“Once we get past the first box, usually it gets better,” Adams County Election Commissioner Larry Gardner said.

In Adams County, Dearing received 5,026 votes, or 60.78 percent at the polls Tuesday, while Sojourner received 3,242 votes or 39.21 percent.

Pike County counted absentees from 16 precincts on Wednesday and will count another 16 the rest of the week. No one at the circuit clerk’s office could provide an exact number of absentees cast. Pike County officials said they hope to complete counting by Monday.

Amite County has 463 absentee ballots and was hoping to be done counting today.

“Normally, absentee ballots go the way the vote went,” Dearing said. “I was very pleased with the great vote we got in Adams County.”

Sojourner was unavailable for comment on Wednesday, but on Election Night said she was proud of the campaign her team ran.

“Going into this we knew that we were tackling something impossible,” Sojourner said. “We knew it was going to be a long road, and a lot of people stepped up. I’m proud of the team around me and the campaign we ran.”