A missing memory card containing election results has overturned the reported lead in a closely watched contest for Georgia House District 154. Republican incumbent Gerald Greene moved ahead of Democrat Harry James after officials uploaded votes that had been omitted from Seminole County’s election management system.

James had been leading Greene by 58 votes before the problem was discovered. After the missing results were added, Greene emerged with a lead of 262 votes, producing a dramatic reversal shortly before the certification deadline.

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Officials with the Georgia Secretary of State’s office noticed that the number of reported votes in Seminole County did not match the number of voters. That safeguard exposed a discrepancy involving 388 votes that had not been included in the county’s reported totals.

County officials determined that a memory card holding election results had never been uploaded into the election management system. Because the card was overlooked, the votes stored on it were not recorded in the reported result.

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The discovery was enough to change which candidate was leading the race. A contest that had James ahead by 58 votes instead showed Greene leading by 262 once the missing votes were included.

The deadline for certifying the election results is Monday. If Greene’s lead holds through certification, the result would affect the balance of power in the Georgia House before Democrats take control.

The Augusta Chronicle reported that Democrats would hold only a one vote margin in the chamber if Greene is declared the winner. Another account described the resulting Democratic advantage as a one seat majority.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced that his office had opened an investigation into the failure in Seminole County. The review will examine how the memory card was missed and whether officials skipped any steps required under the mandated process.

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“Georgia’s election safeguards are designed to identify discrepancies, and that is exactly what these guardrails did,” Raffensperger said in a news release.

“Our office identified a significant discrepancy, alerted county officials, and uncovered a failure to properly upload election results,” he added. The mismatch was identified during routine checks conducted after the election.

Raffensperger made clear that discovering the omitted card did not make the original failure acceptable. “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,” he said.

The investigation will also consider what must be done to prevent the same type of failure in future elections. The central questions include why the card was overlooked and whether county officials followed the proper procedures for uploading results.

The missing card contained Election Day results from Seminole County. Until those results were entered, the county’s reported number of ballots did not align with the number of voters who had checked in.

Once officials were alerted to the discrepancy, they determined that the unreported votes were sitting on a memory card that had not been processed. Uploading that card erased James’s narrow lead and placed Greene in front by a substantially larger margin.

Raffensperger again emphasized the stakes in races decided by relatively small numbers of ballots. “Every vote matters, and in a close election, even a relatively small number of unreported ballots can change the outcome,” Raffensperger said.

That is precisely what happened in House District 154, where an overlooked election file shifted the lead from one party to the other. The investigation now places Seminole County’s handling of the memory card and its compliance with mandated procedures under scrutiny.

The final outcome still depends on certification, but the missing votes have already transformed the race. Greene went from a 58 vote deficit to a 262 vote advantage after officials reconciled the voter count and uploaded the previously omitted results.

For Democrats, the reversal could narrow their control of the Georgia House to the smallest possible margin. For election officials, the case has become an investigation into how one unprocessed memory card came close to leaving hundreds of votes outside the reported total.

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