Lonnie Wooley was re-elected Tuesday to the District 5 seat on the Warren County Election Commission over challenger Gordon Cordes in a runoff that wrapped up the local political season for the year.

Unofficial totals from the district’s five precincts had Wooley with 140 votes to Cordes’ 120. Eight absentees, one affidavit ballot and one curbside ballot were to be counted today by the commission’s resolution board and were not enough to change the result at the polling places.

The 260 votes cast represented a 5.78 percent turnout of the district’s 4,502 registered for this year’s election cycle.

Wooley, 73, and Cordes, 77, joked in the courthouse lobby as ballot cards were processed upstairs in the Circuit Clerk’s Office. Wooley chalked up his win in the low-turnout election to simply being more familiar, if ever so slightly.

“I just have a bigger family than you,” Wooley told Cordes. Both men are retired from the Army.

Cordes had finished first on Nov. 6, with 1,679 votes to Wooley’s 1,494. Robert Croisdale was third, with 678.

Wooley’s re-election cinches a slight majority for the panel’s incumbents. District 2 Commissioner Retha Summers and District 3 Commissioner Elva Smith-Tolliver were unopposed this year.

Two were ousted three weeks ago when Jan Whatley defeated District 1 Commissioner Petesy Smith by nearly 1,100 votes out of more than 3,000 cast and Sara Carlson Dionne won 72 percent of the District 4 vote against incumbent John Rundell.

The commission enrolls voters, assigns polling places, certifies non-party candidates, conducts all general and special elections and certifies results to the Secretary of State’s Office. Members of the panel are elected every four years during the presidential election cycle.