Voters in Statesboro’s City Council District 1 who wait until Election Day, Nov.  5, to vote in the special election to fill their vacant council seat will do so at Statesboro Primitive Baptist Church, 4 South Zetterower Ave., which is also the county’s “Church Precinct” for the regular national, state and county election occurring that day.

In fact, the city special election item will appear on the same ballots with the presidential, legislative and county races, but only for voters who are residents of Statesboro’s Council District 1, said county Election Supervisor Shontay Jones. That will also be the case during the 16-day early voting opportunity, beginning Oct. 15. Early voting will be hosted by the Bulloch County Board of Elections and Registration staff in their office suite at the County Annex, 113 North Main St., Suite 201, Tuesday through Friday, Oct. 15-18, and Monday through Friday, Oct. 21-25 and Oct. 28-Nov. 1, plus two Saturdays, Oct. 19 and 26. Additionally, three days of early voting for Bulloch County registered voters will be held in the Russell Union on the Georgia Southern University campus, Tuesday through Thursday, Oct. 22, 23 and 24.

Sometimes, because of the timing in regard to election law and other factors, special city elections on regular county election days have had to be held “separate and apart” from them, on separate voting machines in different areas of the precinct buildings, as well as during early voting. But with that is not the case this time.

“It will be attached on our ballot, the county ballot, as a special election for those voters who are eligible to vote in City Council District 1,” Jones said. “So when those voters show up on Election Day, or come in and cast a ballot in early voting, for those that are also in District 1, as sorted by their combo numbers, they’ll see at the very end of the county-state-federal ballot, ‘Special Election,’ and they’ll see those City Council candidates for fulfilling (former Councilman) Phil Boyum’s term.”

Boyum, who had represented District 1 – one of Statesboro’s five council districts – on the council for nearly 12 years, resigned effective Aug. 1 after acknowledging that he had been spending much of his time this year at his parents’ home in Florida and would no longer be a Statesboro resident. This was the third year of his most recent term, so the winner of the Nov. 5 special election will get to serve through 2025 but would have to run and win again in the 2025 regular city election to secure a new four-year term for 2026 through 2029.

Three candidates, John Grotheer, Ken Jackson and Tangie Reese Johnson, qualified to run in the special election for the vacant District 1 council seat during the three-day candidate qualifying period, Aug. 20-22.

Temporary move

Statesboro Primitive Baptist Church is not a voting place in regular city elections. In regular city election years, which are odd-numbered years such as 2025, Statesboro’s two voting places are City Precinct 1, which was previously at the William James Educational Complex and would now be at Luetta Moore Park, and City Precinct 2, at Pittman Park United Methodist Church on Fair Road.

But using either of those regular city voting places for the special election would have put city District 1 voters having to cast ballots at two different locations on Election Day because they are also residents of the county’s Church Precinct, Jones explained.

So, the remaining City Council members during their Sept. 3 meeting unanimously approved a resolution calling for the temporary relocation of the Statesboro 1 Precinct from Luetta Moore Park to Statesboro Primitive Baptist Church just for the Nov. 5 District 1 special election.

“By temporarily relocating the city precinct, the voters will be able to vote in both the General Election and the city’s Special Election in one location,” Section 3 of the resolution states in part.

This appears to be the first time in 12 years a Statesboro city special election has made it onto the ballot with a county general election, Jones said. The previous such occurrence was in 2012, when four candidates sought the vacant District 1 seat. Boyum emerged victorious that December from a runoff with Jonathan McCollar. One year later, in December 2013, McCollar also came up a few votes short in a close runoff for mayor, but he first won that office in 2017 and was re-elected to in 2021.

A special election for a vacancy of the District 5 seat was held “separate and apart” on different voting machines back in 2018. But in addition to the convenience of a single voting site, there’s another reason for not doing it that way now, according to Jones.

“Our equipment has changed since the last time we had to do a city-county election, and so we don’t have enough voting equipment to hold two separate elections,” she said. “We have to have a scanner, and every scanner has to be programmed for that polling place, so we didn’t have enough scanners for both a city (election) along with early voting.”

For would-be voters who aren’t already registered or need to update their information, the last day to register to vote before the city special election – and also for the Nov. 5 federal, state and county general election – will be Oct. 7.