Voters approve dissolution of City of Anniston

CHARLESTON, Mo. — Voters in the city of Anniston have spoken, and the majority decided to dissolve the Mississippi County city during Tuesday’s municipal election.

In a vote of 37 in favor of dissolving Anniston and 3 against it, the measure passed.

Although the majority of Anniston voters opted to dissolve the city, also elected was LaDonna Reno, who was a write-in candidate for mayor, which is a two-year term. She received 2 votes.

For Anniston Ward I alderman, Morris Branam received 1 vote. There were no declared candidates for Ward II and no votes cast for this position. The terms are for two years. However, with the dissolution of the city, these terms could change. Check the weekend edition of the Standard Democrat for a follow-up to the city’s dissolution and the process for that.

In Mississippi County’s only contested race on Tuesday, Charleston voters chose Jason Oliver, 169 votes, and Cedrica Polk, 124 votes, over Philip Halter, 99 votes, and write-in candidate, Talisha Mays, 71 votes, to serve the two three-year terms on Charleston City Council.

The remaining races in Mississippi County were unopposed.

In the race for East Prairie’s Alderman, candidates received the following votes: Terry Bruce McLain, Ward 1, who received 6 votes; Bill Haney, Ward 2, 10 votes. There were no declared candidates on the ballot for Ward 3; however, the following write-in candidates received the following votes: Bobby McTigue, 7 votes; Darrell Jones, 2 votes; and Calvin Lemmons, Mike Russell and Mark Turner each received 1 vote.

Running unopposed in the city of Bertrand were Charles Hayton, 6 votes, Ward I; and Robert E. Heppe, 11 votes, for Ward II.

In Wyatt, there were no declared candidates for mayor or Ward 1 alderman. The following write-in candidates received the following votes for mayor: Mitch Pullen, 7 votes; and Tracey Smith, Lydia Cullen and Riley Fitzgerald each received 1 vote. For Ward 1 Alderman, write-in candidates were Gerald Cassell, 2 votes; and Bryan Feezor, 4 votes.

Running unopposed in Wilson City for the three, two-year terms on the Board of Trustees were: Claude Armstrong, 12 votes; Kevin Emanuel, 11 votes; and Theoda Ross, 9 votes.

There were two positions and two candidates for the Charleston R-1 School District. Julie Duenne-Humphrey received 311 votes while Hamil Corse netted 224 votes. Write-in candidate received 59 votes.

There were no votes cast in the Scott County R-4 “Kelly” School District board of education race between Brent Peters, Bobby Newton and Kindel Ward. Peters and Newton won the two seats by receiving 371 votes and 338 votes, respectively, with Ward receiving 252 votes in Scott County.

Mississippi County’s municipal election results were delayed Tuesday due to severe storms and power outages occurring earlier in the day. It was Wednesday, April 3 before Mississippi County Clerk Emily Pullen was able to tabulate results.

“We were out of power countywide except for one polling place, which was Wyatt,” Pulled said on Tuesday.

According to Pullen, the storm hit early around 4:30 a.m. Tuesday, and the power went out with three polling places without power when voting starting at 6 a.m.

“Charleston’s power did come on late this morning, so we were able to get them up and running,” Pullen said Tuesday. “Any time there’s a power outage, we do have a battery back up on our machines, but they only last a couple hours.

Pullen continued: “We do have emergency bins that the ballots go in (when there is no electricity) and as we were able to get the machines back up and running with the battery backups, we were running the ballots through but the batteries have since died again.”

According to Pullen, all election judges placed all voted ballots in a voted ballot box and brought each polling location’s machines to and plugged them into the Mississippi County Courthouse power to run the voting reports.

“The ballots that were in the emergency bin have been put into a sealed box so we can re-run those, and the ones that were able to be run in there won’t be counted twice,” Pullen said. “That’s whats going to delay us — because we are also going to make sure and go back through and hand count each machine to make sure every ballot was counted. We want to make sure that the power glitch did not cause anyone’s ballot to not be counted.”

These results, which are unofficial until noon Friday, April 5, were provided by Pullen’s office.