Walker County government change

Yesterday's vote in Walker County Georgia was historic.

It was the beginning of a whole new way to govern the county.

In leadership are coming to walker county, after tuesday's primary election.

News 12's bekah birdsall explains why it's making history.

Walker county reelected sole- commissioner shannon whitfield as now the chairman of the board of commissioners.

Two others ran for the position including perry lamb and matt harris.

Whitfield had 52% of the vote with harris just behind at 39%, and lamb receiving less than 9% of the vote.

Director of elections, danielle montgomery said the election process went smoothly, but saw a huge spike in absentee ballots along with in-person voters.

"there may have been some longer lines and not necessarily all due to the pandemic situation and social distancing.

A lot to do with people who received absentee ballots through the mail and for whatever reason didn't want to vote then and wanted to bring them to the poles.

We processed well over 9000 absentee ballot requests and we received about 6800 of those requests."

This election however, was different.

For the first time since the early 1900s, walker county will have a board of commisioners.

The change finally came after the sole-commissioner idea was heavily crititicized.

Residents wanted more representation and ways for their voice to be heard.

"there will be 5 individuals involved in decision making as opposed to one, with a board of commisioners, the chairperson will act as the county manager and will be running the county, but any sort of policy and budget approval and those sorts of things will have to be run by the board of commissioners."

Says joe lagge, public relations director in walker county.

"now that the citizens have agreed with this and allowed local government to change to a board of commissioners.

We will have an election on the presidential cycle in 2020 for those positions to be filled."

Once the board of commisioners are elected in november, whitfield plans to continue decreasing the county's large accumulated debt.

"since he took office 3 and a half years ago, he's gotten it