Voters in Madison County's newly drawn judicial Subcircuit 1 showed preference for Republican candidate, attorney Tim Berkley, over Democrat Associate Judge Ryan Jumper by 710 votes.
Berkley received 4,556 votes to Jumper's 3,846 votes in the scaled down judicial district that includes 70 of 191 precincts along the county's western border. The candidates seek the seat of retiring Chief Judge Bill Mudge.
Berkley and Jumper were unopposed in their primary races, and the outcome simply secures their placement on the November general election ballot.
Whether Democrat judicial candidates Barry Julian and Ebony Huddleston earned enough write-in votes to be placed on the November ballot will not be known until at least Friday, according to the Madison County Clerk's office.
Julian and Huddleston, also running in Subcircuit 1, would each need 334 valid write-in votes to receive their party's nomination.
Their Republican counterparts were unopposed in Tuesday's primary:
Circuit Judge Amy Sholar, who will potentially face Huddleston, received 4,856 votes for the Tognarelli vacancy.
Circuit Judge Christopher Threlkeld, who will potentially face Julian, received 4,581 votes for the Dugan vacancy.
When announcing his bid for write-in candidacy in May, Julian said he expected the write-in process to be easier than conventional nomination, because he only needed 334 write-in votes "as opposed to all the work it took to get more than 334 signatures" while circulating petitions.
His petitions, and those of Huddleston's, were rejected by a three-member county electoral board because dates on their paperwork fell outside of the legal period for circulation.
Huddleston said in May that while nothing is guaranteed, the write-in process is "something that we can overcome." She said she had received more than 1,000 petition signatures, later found to be invalid.
In January, the Democratically controlled state legislature passed the Judicial Circuits Redistricting Act of 2022 without input from the local court or public debate. The law dramatically changed the way Madison County voters select judges. Until this election, judicial elections were decided by voters county-wide.
The new law divides the county into three subcircuits. Critics say it was done to suppress voter preference for Republicans, who have made great gains in county leadership over the past several election cycles.