Lafayette County was full of all types of mixed emotions last night as everyone waited to hear about the status of our county and country. The courthouse was in frenzy all day and night trying to tally the votes for the members of the Lafayette community and make sure all the polling stations ran smoothly. Families waited in the courthouse to hear what the election votes would be.
After taking with Max Hipp District 2 Commissioner earlier throughout the day he had a lot to say about how the day was going. According to Hipp, “ At 10 a.m. 500-600 people had already voted at his prescient.” Many commissioners were going and coming back and forth from their stations throughout the day to make sure everything ran smoothly. “It is always issues that come up. It is mostly pretty routine. Hopefully it goes smoothly, said Hipp.” Hipp had the largest district of the day. They broke the district down with five tables and had everyone’s last name letter listed so they could see where to go. Hipp was expecting 2500 people to vote from his district yesterday. He has been working as the district commissioner for two years however, this is his seventh election.
As of 10 a.m. it was also 577 abstentee votes that had been casted, but no one is allowed to count those until the end of the night.
Debbie Black Election Commissioner of District 5 had an interesting day as well working the election. “I do not have too many thoughts for the election. It is more stress than normal, said Black.” As of noon the polls were running, “pretty smooth with a few glitches. Nothing out of the ordinary though, said Black.” This is Blacks second term working as election commission and her sixth year.
The night finally arrived at the courthouse with families and reporters waiting to hear the status of Lafayette County.
Ballots started to roll in at the courthouse around 7:30 p.m. The first group of papers came upstairs by Jeff Busby the President of the Board of Supervisors. Throughout the entire night Busby delivered the Lafayette County election results. The first group of papers was delivered to everyone waiting around 8:30 p.m. showing only six of the 18 precincts. Trump and Clinton were neck and neck with the numbers for Trump being 2818 and Clinton having 2137 votes. However, at this time this report only covered 33.33% of the Lafayette county residents.
Brent Larson and his family were one of a few families waiting for the election results to see who won Lafayette County School Board Member District One. He, his wife, and son were seen looking hopeful as he stood in the lead at this time.
County workers set up the Encoder cases before the people are allowed to cast their vote. The encoders have memory cards and from there the memory cards are put into another machine so the votes can be counted. After that the memory cards are then sent to Jackson to be recorded there as well.
The last group of papers came around at around 10:45 p.m. it showed all of the 18 precincts information. In Lafayette country Trump had won with 54.87% of this county’s vote. That is a total of 9710 votes. Hilary had 39.77% of Lafayette’s vote with a total of 7038 votes.
Brent Larson won the Lafayette County School Board Member District One. Larson had 52.76% of the vote with a total of 765 votes going toward him.
A day of mayhem in Lafayette County finally had come to a stop. As for the rest of the night everyone all over the country still waited to see who was going to become the new President of the United States.
Conner Mounger