UPDATE: Voter turnout historically low for first half of the day in Primary elections

Today, June 5, Mississippi held primaries for one U.S. Senate Seat, the one currently held by Senator Roger Wicker, the other was recently vacated by Sen. Thad Cochran upon his retirement and will go straight to the November election. There are also two Congressional District seats up for grabs with a primary election, The Third and Fourth Districts.

As of 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann reported that numbers were historically low for voter turnout.

“The third district, which is heavily contested among Republicans and Democrats, has seen a turnout of approximately 10% of the registered voting public coming out to vote. I don’t have the hard numbers of years passed, but those numbers are lower than we have ever seen,” said Hosemann.

He remarked that voter numbers do not typically increase after work hours end (5-7 p.m.) like you might think, so they don’t expect to see a huge surge in the percentage of voters.

Hosemann in partnership with the State Auditors office sent a total of 26 representatives to each polling precinct to monitor and collect data on the primary. Each person was sent with a checklist to monitor and those results will be released within the next two weeks.

For the the U.S. Senate seat there are contenders in both party primaries. For the Republicans are Senator Roger Wicker the incumbent who is running against Richard Boyanton. On the Democratic ticket are a few more contenders, Rep. David Baria, Rep. Omeria Scott, Howard Sherman of Meridian, Jensen Bohren, Jerone Garland, and Victor G. Maurice Jr. of Gufport.

When it comes to the Congressional races both were fairly tame during the first portion of the campaign season. In the Third District race you have six republicans facing off, Michael Guest, Whit Hughes, Sally Doty, Katherine Tate, Perry Parker, and Morgan Dunn. On the Democrats side are Rep. Michael Evans and Michael Aycox.

The Fourth District race is slightly smaller with incumbent Congressman Steven Palazzo facing off against Brian E. Rose a military veteran.

Stay tuned here for updates throughout the day on primary results.