Georgia Democrats Won the State House, but a Forgotten Memory Card Just Shrank Their Majority

A memory card that never got uploaded on election night has flipped a Georgia state House race to the Republican incumbent and could leave Democrats clinging to a one-seat majority.

Seminole County officials found the card after the secretary of state’s office spotted about 388 more voters checked in at polling places on Election Day than ballots reported as cast, WCTV reported, citing the office’s release.

Before the discovery, Democrat Harry James led Republican state Rep. Gerald Greene by 58 votes in House District 154. Once the missing votes were added, Greene took a 262-vote lead, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

“Our office identified a significant discrepancy, alerted county officials, and uncovered a failure to properly upload election results,” Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said, according to WTXL.

“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,” Raffensperger said.

One Seat to Spare

Democrats won a Georgia House majority on Tuesday for the first time in 22 years. If Greene’s win holds, they would have 92 seats in the 180-member chamber, one more than the 91 needed, the AJC reported.

The probe will examine why the card was not uploaded to Seminole County’s election management system on Nov. 3, Bloomberg reported, citing a statement from Raffensperger’s office.

Investigators want to know how the card was overlooked, whether required election procedures were followed, and what corrective steps are needed to prevent a repeat, according to WCTV.

The county has until Monday to certify its results, so the outcome is not final. County election officials could not be reached by WCTV for comment Friday.

The case shows a post-election check doing its job. The mismatch between check-ins and ballots was flagged by state staff, not by the losing campaign, before the race was certified.

Raffensperger, a Republican, drew national attention after he rebuffed Trump’s attempts to overturn Georgia’s 2020 results, Bloomberg noted. This time his office’s check rescued a GOP seat.

The episode is likely to feed the long-running fight over election administration in Georgia, where both parties have battled for years over voting rules, audits and how fast counties report results.

Seminole County is a small rural county in the state’s southwest corner, bordering Alabama and Florida. Its Election Day results had been reported without the missing card’s votes.

Greene, a longtime southwest Georgia lawmaker, had looked like one of the Legislature’s most vulnerable GOP incumbents in a night when Democrats swept statewide offices, the AJC reported.

A one-seat margin would make every absence and defection matter when Democrats try to set the agenda in January, from the budget to election rules and redistricting.

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