Georgia Democrats spent the week celebrating their first state House majority in more than two decades. Then the secretary of state's office found an Election Day memory card in Seminole County that had never been uploaded.
Republican state Rep. Gerald Greene went from trailing Democrat Harry James by 58 votes to leading him by 262 once the card's votes were added on Friday, according to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's office, which has opened an investigation into the county's late upload. By Saturday, the state's results page had Greene at 10,193 votes to 9,932 for James in House District 154, a nine-county seat in southwest Georgia.
The state's elections staff caught it in a routine post-election check. In Seminole County, approximately 388 more voters were recorded as having checked in at polling places on Election Day than ballots were reported as cast, the office said. It alerted the county, which then realized it had missed a memory card, state elections director Blake Evans told the AJC.
"Our office identified a significant discrepancy, alerted county officials, and uncovered a failure to properly upload election results," Raffensperger said in a statement. "This oversight didn't just affect the numbers - it changed who was leading an election."
"That is unacceptable, and we intend to find out exactly how it happened," he added.
The probe will look at how the card was overlooked, whether required election procedures were followed and what corrective measures are needed to prevent a repeat, according to the office. The Seminole County Board of Elections had no one available to comment when WCTV called on Friday. The county has until Monday to certify its results.
Greene told the AJC he was "in disbelief" and hopes the result holds. The paper couldn't reach James. Greene was first elected to the House in 1982 as a Democrat, switched to the GOP after the 2010 election and is the only Republican in the General Assembly who represents a majority-Black district.
With Greene's seat back in Republican hands, Democrats would hold 92 of the chamber's 180 seats, one more than the 91 votes needed to pass legislation. They appear to have flipped 13 other Republican-held seats while losing two of their own, according to The Current.
Two more Republican seats are still unsettled. In a Lawrenceville-area district, Republican Rep. Soo Hong trails Democrat Chris Luchey by 27 votes, a margin close enough for Hong to ask for a recount. In Americus, Republican Rep. Mike Cheokas finished first but short of a majority after independent Travis Lockhart took 11%, and he now faces Democrat Ethan Wolfe in a Dec. 1 runoff. If Cheokas loses, Democrats would have a two-vote cushion.
During the 2020 presidential recount, Floyd County turned up more than 2,600 ballots that had gone uncounted because officials never uploaded a scanner's memory card, and Fayette County then found more than 2,700 votes on a card that hadn't been uploaded.
In 2022, Cobb County election workers preparing for a risk-limiting audit found a memory card holding 789 uncounted ballots, and it handed a Kennesaw City Council special election to the other candidate, Lynette Burnette, who won by 31 votes after the leader had already declared victory. A state investigation later found Fulton County never counted about 1,300 votes in its 2022 primary.
Rep. Carolyn Hugley, the Columbus Democrat in line to become speaker, told the AJC her office is following up and looking into the Seminole County matter.