DONALSONVILLE, Ga. — A memory card that never made it into Seminole County’s vote totals has reversed the apparent winner of a southwest Georgia state House race, and Georgia’s top election official, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, is now investigating how the votes slipped through.
State staff spotted the problem during routine post-election checks. Seminole County’s Election Day check-in records showed roughly 388 more voters than the ballot total the county had reported. When asked, county election officials said one memory card with results had not been loaded into the election management system.
Once those votes were added, the House District 154 contest changed hands. Longtime Republican Rep. Gerald Greene, who has served in the House since January 1983, went from trailing Democrat Harry James by 58 votes to leading by 262, according to the secretary of state’s office. As of the state’s last update Saturday, the unofficial count stood at 10,193 for Greene to 9,932 for James.
Raffensperger said in a statement that state safeguards caught the discrepancy as intended, but called the failure to upload results unacceptable because it changed who was leading the race. The review will focus on why the card was missed and whether county workers followed the rules they are required to use.
The Seminole County Board of Elections has said chain-of-custody rules were followed and every memory card was accounted for. The board said its election management computer did not finish processing the final precinct’s card, so the summary report it released was marked unofficial and incomplete. Counted ballots, scanner tapes and memory card data all showed 2,911 ballots cast in the county, the board said.
The seat matters beyond the district. Unofficial returns gave Democrats 93 House seats out of 180, which would be their first majority in the chamber in 22 years. Should Greene’s lead be certified, that number drops to 92, one more than the 91 needed to control the chamber. Voters in House District 151 will settle their own contest in a runoff on Dec. 1. County officials face a Monday deadline to certify results.
Section: More Savannah GA politics news
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