The Webster Progress-Times

WALTHALL -Charles Rivers won Tuesday's runoff in a special election for District 3 supervisor.

Rivers garnered 406 votes (64 percent) to opponent Janice Lamb's 224 (36 percent), according to complete but unofficial results.

Circuit Clerk Deborah Hood Neal said those totals include 20 absentee votes for Rivers and 12 for Lamb. She said two affidavit ballots were also cast which would not affect the outcome of the election.

The Webster County Election Commission was to certify the election results on Wednesday, after which Rivers was to be sworn in at a recessed meeting of the Board of Supervisors.

Rivers also led the voting in the Nov. 8 special election, which had nine candidates, but none received a majority, requiring the runoff. He will fill the remaining two years in the late Lynn Lamb's term. The next general election for county supervisors will be in 2007.

Lamb, a teacher at Eupora Elementary School, had been serving as interim supervisor since the county board appointed her to the post following her husband's death in October 2004.

Rivers, who had been District 3 road foreman, joins Robert Hitt (District 1), Mart Salley (District 2), Larry Crowley (District 4) and Casey Weeks (District 5) on the county board.

The voter turnout in District 3 for the runoff was about 44 percent, down from about 50 percent two weeks ago.