It’s official.

In a special

meeting Wednesday, the Selma City Council unanimously approved a resolution making the results of Tuesday’s elections official.

The official numbers showed no major variance from Tuesday’s unofficial totals.

Selma Mayor James Perkins Jr. retained his position without a runoff.

Perkins’ official final total was 4,519.

State Representative Yusef Salaam finished with 2,032 votes while Gene Hisel had 1,317 votes.

Glenn King finished with 171 votes.

In the two runoffs, incumbent Jean Martin will face Felicia Owens-Dixon for Ward 3 while James Durry will face challenger Jannie Venter.

Martin finished with 315 votes, Owens-Dixon had 250 and Michael Hayes missed the runoff with 212 votes.

In Ward 8 only eight votes separated Venter and Durry.

Venter had 352 to Durry’s 344.

In the Council President race, George Evans retained his seat by a final tally of 4,938 to Frank Chestnut’s 2,769.

Robert Walker finished with 208 votes.

There were no significant changes in the other wards.

Dr. Cecil Williamson, Reid Cain, Dr. Geraldine Allen, Sam Randolph, Bennie Ruth Crenshaw and Johnnie Leashore all won easily.

After sorting through some numbers, Evans brought up some of the problems voters and poll workers had brought to him.

One of the complaints was the facilities in the Old KFC building in Ward 2 and a couple of polling places that opened late.

“This may not be the appropriate time to bring this up,” Crenshaw said.

However, Evans said that since the people had come to him with these issues, he wanted to talk about them and prevent any of the same troubles from happening the next time.

“That is something we ought to be concerned about,” he said.

City Attorney Jimmy Nunn, who went to the Old KFC building himself to fix the problems, said he and Election Manager Lois Williams agreed that the voting sites should be as comfortable as possible.

“I think during the next election you’ll see a big change,” he said.

Williams acknowledged that she also had received some complaints and took full responsibility for any site that was not ready. She said that as the day went along, things did go much better.

Evans stressed that his motives were not to place blame, only to make sure the problems went on the record so the city could prevent the same problems from occurring again.

“I’d like to thank Ms. Williams for the job she did,” Evans said.

There was also a brief discussion of the absentee ballot process.

Williams pointed out that it was incorrectly reported that the absentee ballots were delayed by a lack of a name on the affidavit on the outside of the envelope.

In fact, it was the lack of a ballot number on the outside of the envelope that forced city officials to get a rule from the League of Municipalities.