A memory card that never made it into Seminole County's election system has upended a Georgia House race, handing Republican incumbent Gerald E. Greene a 262-vote lead over Democrat Harry James in a contest that had briefly looked like a Democratic pickup. The discrepancy surfaced during routine post-election checks of ballots cast in the southwest Georgia county, and it now threatens to shrink a Democratic majority that appeared to be forming in the state House for the first time in more than two decades.
County officials discovered that a memory card had not been uploaded to the county's election management system, according to CBS News. The gap showed up as a mismatch between the number of voters who had checked in at polling places and the number of ballots the county reported as cast — officials found around 388 more check-ins than reported votes, per the outlet's reporting. Once the missing votes were added in, Greene's standing in the race flipped entirely.
Before the card was uploaded, unofficial totals had Harry James with a slight lead over Greene; the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Greg Bluestein reported the shift more precisely, noting Greene went from trailing by 58 votes to leading by 262 once the card's contents were counted. With the new votes included, officials now say Greene leads the race, according to the same CBS News report. District 154's outcome had been one of the closer contests shaping control of the Georgia House this cycle.
State Investigators Demand Answers
The Georgia secretary of state's office has opened an investigation into the late upload, examining whether proper procedures were followed, how the card was overlooked in the first place, and what measures need to be put in place to prevent a repeat, CBS News reported. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger did not mince words about the oversight. “That is unacceptable, and we intend to find out exactly how it happened,” he said, according to the outlet's reporting.
Raffensperger's office also said it would look into whether other memory cards elsewhere had been similarly overlooked and whether election procedures should change as a result, per the reporting provided. Seminole County officials had until Monday to certify their results, leaving a tight window for the discrepancy to be resolved before the race could be locked in.
A Seat That Could Decide Who Runs the House
The stakes extend well beyond one southwest Georgia county. Democrats needed to flip control of 10 seats to reach the 91-seat majority threshold in the 180-member Georgia House, and the Georgia Recorder reported that Democrats appeared poised to end more than two decades of Republican control of the chamber. As of 5 p.m. Wednesday, only six House races remained undecided, according to the Recorder's count. If the District 154 result had held in James's favor, Democrats would have claimed 92 seats, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's reporting on the race — one more than the bare majority they needed.
A New York Times results page updated Wednesday evening showed Democrats with 90 seats to Republicans' 86 in the chamber, underscoring how close the overall fight for control remained even before the Seminole County card surfaced. Greene, the Republican incumbent, had appeared to be on the losing end of that count until the uncounted votes were added.
Echoes of a 2020 Audit
The Seminole County episode recalls a similar lapse from Georgia's 2020 presidential election audit, when a memory card found in a Fayette County counting room turned up 2,755 votes that poll workers had missed earlier, according to the Georgia Recorder. An aide to Raffensperger said at the time that the error occurred because an election worker had failed to properly upload ballots cast during early voting. Gabriel Sterling, a state election official, said that audit was uncovering problems in Fayette, Floyd and Walton counties while confirming the presidential result still was not likely to change.
Whether the Seminole County card issue traces back to a similar human error has not been determined, and the secretary of state's investigation remains ongoing. For now, the discrepancy leaves District 154 — and potentially the balance of power in the Georgia House — hanging on the outcome of a review into a single overlooked memory card.
