A closely watched Georgia House race has flipped in favor of Republican state Rep. Gerald Greene after hundreds of previously unreported Election Day votes were added to the count in Seminole County.
Greene now leads Democratic challenger Harry James by 253 votes in House District 154 following Monday’s county certification deadline.
The latest totals show Greene with 10,194 votes, or 50.63%, compared with 9,941 votes, or 49.37%, for James.
The dramatic reversal came after James initially appeared to defeat Greene by just 58 votes on election night.
During Georgia’s routine post-election review, the Secretary of State’s Office discovered that approximately 388 more voters had checked in at Seminole County polling locations than the number of ballots initially reported.
State officials alerted the Seminole County Board of Elections, which determined that results associated with a voting-system memory card had not been fully uploaded into the county’s election management system.
After those results were processed, Greene moved from a 58-vote deficit to a 262-vote lead.
Additional adjustments during the certification process reduced Greene’s advantage to 253 votes.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger initially opened an investigation into how the results were omitted.
“Georgia’s election safeguards are designed to identify discrepancies, and that is exactly what these guardrails did,” Raffensperger said.
“Our office identified a significant discrepancy, alerted county officials, and uncovered a failure to properly upload election results,” he continued.
“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.”
The Secretary of State’s Office said Monday that its investigation had concluded and determined that the memory card containing the additional results had been overlooked rather than missing.
Seminole County Elections Supervisor Ron Foskey disputed earlier descriptions suggesting that officials had discovered a missing memory card.
“There was no memory card ‘discovered’, ‘missing’, or ‘found’,” Foskey said.
“All precinct card chain of custody protocols were followed, and all memory cards were accounted for by the Seminole County Board of Elections on Election night.”
According to Foskey, the county’s Election Management System failed to complete processing for the final precinct’s memory card.
“The Election Management System computer did not complete its program for the last precincts memory card,” Foskey said.
The county’s Election Summary Report had therefore been labeled “Unofficial and Incomplete.”
Foskey said officials completed the final validation and publishing process after the Secretary of State’s Office alerted them to the discrepancy.
The corrected totals matched the number of ballots cast, scanner records and information contained on the memory cards, according to county officials.
The episode highlights why election-night totals remain unofficial until counties complete canvassing and certification.
Election officials routinely compare voter check-ins, ballot totals, scanner records and other documentation during that process to identify discrepancies before results become official.
“You know, some of the most important work we do happens after election night,” Bartow County Elections Director Joseph Kirk told FOX 5 Atlanta while explaining the process.
“Where we go through a canvassing process, make sure everything checks out. We didn’t want to count votes. We didn’t count anything we shouldn’t have. And that’s why you see results change going into certification.”
The outcome carries significant consequences for control of the Georgia House.
Democrats initially appeared to have captured 93 seats in the 180-member chamber, enough to take control for the first time in more than two decades.
If Greene’s advantage ultimately stands, Democrats would instead hold 92 seats, still one more than the 91 required for a majority.
Another contest remains unresolved in House District 151, where Republican Rep. Mike Cheokas and Democrat Ethan Wolfe are headed to a Dec. 1 runoff.
Greene is one of Georgia’s longest-serving lawmakers.
He was first elected to the House in 1982 as a Democrat before switching to the Republican Party after the 2010 election.
Greene also represents a majority-Black district and has repeatedly survived increasingly competitive elections.
The 2026 contest, however, is not yet officially finished at the state level.
Although Seminole County has certified its corrected results, Georgia’s statewide certification deadline is Nov. 20.
