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November 8, 2026, at 2:00 p.m. Eastern time.
An overlooked election machine memory card containing 388 uncounted ballots in rural southwest Georgia has dramatically flipped the outcome of a key state legislative race, narrowing Democrats’ newly won majority in the Georgia House of Representatives to a razor-thin single seat.
The discrepancy in Seminole County was discovered during routine post-election reconciliation checks conducted by the Office of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Prior to the card's discovery, unofficial election night results showed Democratic challenger Harry James leading veteran Republican incumbent Rep. Gerald Greene by 58 votes in House District 154.
When election workers uploaded the misplaced memory card into the county's central tabulation server on Saturday, the ballot count shifted overwhelmingly in favor of Greene. The 12-term Republican lawmaker vaulted into the lead by 262 votes, stripping Democrats of what appeared to be an historic pickup in rural Georgia.
Safeguards catch 388-vote discrepancy
State election officials explained that Georgia's post-election auditing protocol specifically cross-references the number of digital poll-pad voter check-ins against the number of scanned paper ballots recorded by optical precinct tabulators.
During the canvassing process on Friday, state monitors noticed that exactly 388 more voters had checked in at a precinct polling location in Seminole County than had been tabulated in the county's initial results file. The state notified the local board of elections, prompting staff to search the precinct's secure equipment lockers. They uncovered a memory cartridge from an optical ballot scanner that had never been transferred to the central server on Tuesday night.
"The check-and-balance process worked exactly as designed to ensure every legal vote is counted," Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said in a statement. "However, the failure of local county officials to upload all memory cards on election night is completely unacceptable. It shook voter confidence and erroneously altered the perceived winner of a race."
Raffensperger announced that state election investigators have been dispatched to Donalsonville to conduct a formal inquiry into local handling procedures and determine whether county officials violated Georgia election statutes.
