A memory card from election night in Seminole County, in southwest Georgia, held about 388 ballots that were never counted — and counting them has flipped the State House District 154 race. The Georgia Secretary of State's office said a post-election check found approximately 388 more voters recorded as having checked in at polling places on Election Day than the number of ballots reported as cast. The Secretary of State's office caught the discrepancy itself and notified Seminole County's Board of Elections.
The effect on the race is a reversal. Democrat challenger Harry James had led the count by 58 votes; with the memory-card ballots added, Republican incumbent Gerald Greene now leads by 262 votes. The race is still uncalled, and the county has until Monday to certify its election results. The seat matters beyond the district, too: as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports, losing it could narrow the Democrats' newly won majority in the state House before they even take power.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's office has opened an investigation into "how the memory card was overlooked, whether required election procedures were followed, and what corrective measures are necessary to prevent similar incidents in future elections." The Seminole County Board of Elections had no comment when reporters reached out on Friday afternoon.
For the roughly 388 voters on that card, nothing about their votes was wrong — they checked in, cast their ballots and went home. The failure was in the counting, and it came to light only because the state cross-checked how many voters checked in against how many ballots were reported. A seat in the State House now turns on that one overlooked card, which is why the investigation matters to every Georgia voter: the result of an election should rest on the ballots people cast, all of them, the first time they are counted.
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