Georgia voters might not know for some time who won Tuesday night’s Republican runoff in the race for state school superintendent.
Mike Buck trails Richard L. Woods by less than one-fifth of 1 percent out of nearly 398,000 ballots cast – a margin that’s far closer than the 1 percent gap that would enable Buck to request a recount. Buck, the chief academic officer at the state Department of Education, said Tuesday night that he will request a recount if the gap is less than 1 percent.
Counties, however, are still counting provisional ballots, and the secretary of state’s office isn’t expected to certify the results until early next week. Once the results are certified, Buck would have two business days to request a recount.
In that scenario, every single vote in every single county would be counted again, a process that has no fixed timetable. Counties are expected to conduct the recount in a timely fashion.
Buck was the top vote-getter in the GOP primary in May, but he failed to get a majority of the votes cast, forcing him into the runoff with Woods.
Woods, a longtime educator from Irwin County making his second run for superintendent, had the backing of tea party activists who oppose the national set of academic standards known as Common Core.
In the general election this fall, the Buck-Woods winner will face Valarie Wilson, the former chairwoman of the City Schools of Decatur school board. Wilson defeated state Rep. Alisha Thomas Morgan, D-Austell, in Tuesday night’s Democratic runoff.
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