After almost 20 hours of hand counting presidential votes, election officials found that nearly 3,000 ballots were not processed on Election Day in one George county.
After almost 20 hours of hand counting presidential votes, election officials found that nearly 3,000 ballots that were not processed on Election Day in one Georgia county.
According to Board of Elections chairman Tom Rees on Monday, the weekend's hand counting in Floyd County—observed by members of both the local Democratic and Republican parties—"added 2,631 more votes than were registered by computers."
Floyd County GOP chairman Luke Martin noted that the elections office "did not misplace any ballots," pointing to a "computer software mishap with the Dominion system."
It appears that the votes did not come from Nov. 3 in-person polling or absentee ballots, but rather early voting at the Floyd County Administration Building. Sources told Coosa Valley News that between 1,600 and 1,900 were cast for President Donald Trump.
Early votes cast on Oct. 24 were not counted due to a scanner error. After a scanner broke, CVN continued, the ballots were taken to a second scanner where they were improperly scanned. 75 provisional ballots were also counted more than once.
The recount would likely help Trump reduce his 14,000-vote deficit to Democratic challenger Joe Biden, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. Trump could gain about 800 net votes from the newly-discovered ballots.
State Elections director Chris Harvey announced that the ballots will be rescanned and tabulated before results are finalized Friday.
"You want every vote counted right the first time, but that is one of the goals of the audit: to identify problems," Harvey stated. "All the votes will be uploaded, and the results will be what they are."
According to calculations, 38,588 total votes were cast in the presidential election in Floyd County. The ballots found equal 6.8 percent of votes not originally tallied.
"It is scary that this happened in Floyd County," Martin said. "Imagine what the numbers could look like in places like Fulton County."
Rome City commissioner Wendy Davis commented on the county's discovery: "I am proud of the wonderful people who came in and worked tirelessly for two days. What we discovered that the count that the elections office turned into the secretary of state was wrong."
Loading this lets YouTube set cookies and collect data.
View on YouTubeLibby’s Desk
Commentary and must-reads from Libby’s desk, straight to your inbox.
TPM Newsletter
The Post Millennial’s top stories, delivered to your inbox.
