More than half of eligible Wilkes County voters returned to the polls Tuesday and elected Thomas Charping to the office of Wilkes Probate judge.

In the Wilkes Probate Judge race, Charping got 2,173 votes to Kimberly Rainey's 1,128 votes.

In the U.S. Senate race, Wilkes voters chose incumbent Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss over Democratic challenger Jim Martin by a vote of 1,916 to 1,430.

Supervisor of Elections Judge Jim Burton said that turnout for the runoff was good, with early voting again being popular. The results published at press time did not include a small number of provisional ballots, he said. A chart of those results may be seen on page 16.