Republican Katie Dempsey has officially defeated Democrat Bob Puckett by 168 votes.

Confirmation came yesterday with 4,523 final votes for Dempsey and 4,355 final votes for Puckett.

Puckett congratulated Dempsey who will take the seat of Paul Smith, D-Rome.

Although he did have concerns regarding problems with the machine counts, he was pleased with the news yesterday. Legally, Puckett could have requested a recount due to voting problems that delayed counting on election night, but didn’t.

Katie Dempsey’s first day in the seat was spent casting votes as representative elect at the Capitol.