NATCHEZ — Assistant District Attorney Walt Brown was elected to the Adams County Court judgeship with a nearly 14-percentage point margin in official election results Tuesday.

Brown took 3,414 votes — 57 percent —in a runoff election with Justice Court Judge Patricia Dunmore, who received 2,574 votes — 43 percent — of the in-person ballots cast.

Two write-in ballots were also cast.

“I am kind of overwhelmed by the margin,” Brown said. “I am pleasantly surprised by that. It was a cold day to get out and vote.”

Election commissioners still have to count and verify the 448 absentee ballots for the election.

While election officials won’t be certifying absentee and affidavit votes until Monday because of the holidays, Election Commission Chairman Larry Gardner said he didn’t expect the final results to change dramatically.

“Regardless of how those go, it won’t impact the results of what we got (Tuesday),” Gardner said. “These results will stay about the same.”

After the results came in, Brown thanked his family and friends who helped to rally the vote. He also thanked all of the voters who made it a point to vote even though it is a holiday week.

“I also want to congratulate Judge Dunmore on a very clean campaign amongst friends,” he said.

“We all want a good judge, and I am humbled I was the one picked.”

Brown said he will have an open door policy as judge, and has already been invited to sit in on youth court proceedings to get up to speed and has plans to review the county court docket in the coming month.

The judge-elect will take office in January.

Dunmore said she wanted to wait until all official results were verified before conceding the election.

“I want to commend Walt for a clean race and if the official results shows he won, I will shake his hand and concede (the) victory,” she said.

Dunmore said she also wanted to thank those who campaigned on her behalf.

“They are the best people I know and they are strong and are willing to work for peanuts,” she said. “I think that says something very remarkable about them.

Of the county’s 20,026 voters, 5,990 cast ballots — 29.9 percent.

Gardner said he was disappointed with the turnout in Tuesday’s runoff election.

“Do you really get the will of the people when you only have 30 percent of the vote, because then what do the other 70 percent think?” Gardner said. “They don’t really have a direct message by the electorate because they didn’t show up.”

Gardner said only one issue arose throughout the day with a voting machine at the Kingston precinct. The voting machine was replaced shortly after poll workers noticed an issue, Gardner said.

“One out of 45 machines isn’t bad,” Gardner said.

 

Vershal Hogan and Rod Guajardo contributed to this report.