Observations all along the line - Kimball & the Southern Panhandle First
After months of campaigning for the hotly contested Kimball County Sheriff's race, voters unseated Sheriff Harry Gillway in favor of challenger David Hottell, according to unofficial results.
The GOP primary determined the winner because no other candidates sought the office.
The unofficial results as of 9:20 Tuesday night were Hottell with 431 votes and Gillway with 413, County Clerk Cathy Sibal told the Observer. Results by precinct weren't immediately available.
At 7:08, the counting board began counting the early ballots by inserting each of the 179 early ballots into the voting machine.
The county's Josi Morgan said 186 early ballots were requested, six were not returned, and one ballot was considered provisional.
By 7:30, the first of the five precincts, Bushnell, brought its results from the DS 200 voting machine. The results came via a USB and a paper copy.
Voting in the May 10 primary election of 2022 concluded at 7 p.m. Tuesday. It took just more than two hours to run the tabulations on the voting machines and total all the votes for Kimball County.