Greene Trailed by 58. One Memory Card Put Him Ahead by 262.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office caught a Seminole County failure that changed who is leading a state House race: an Election Day memory card that never got uploaded. After the votes went in Friday, Republican Rep. Gerald E. Greene flipped from trailing Democrat Harry James by 58 votes to leading by 262 in House District 154 — and Raffensperger opened an investigation into how the card was overlooked.

The discrepancy was not a rumor from social media. It came out of the state’s own post-election checks.

388 check-ins, one missing card

According to the Secretary of State’s release, officials found about 388 more voters recorded as having checked in at Seminole County polling places on Election Day than the number of ballots the county had reported as cast. The office notified the Seminole County Board of Elections. County officials then discovered a memory card that had not been uploaded to the election management system.

Gabriel Sterling — the longtime statewide voting-system official tied to Raffensperger’s office — put the finding on 𝕏 Friday afternoon:

“Through post-election canvassing it was discovered that a memory card of Election Day votes had not been uploaded from Seminole County,” Sterling wrote. “That has been done & Rep Gerald Greene is now winning that race that he had been trailing since election night.”

The county’s own incomplete report shows the hole

Seminole County’s posted Election Summary Report, generated Election Night at 9:33 p.m. and still labeled “Unofficial & Incomplete,” shows how far short the first upload was. In House District 154 inside Seminole County alone, that PDF recorded Greene 1,665 and James 824 — with 2,523 total ballots cast countywide.

The live Georgia SOS results page Friday afternoon shows Seminole County at Greene 2,019 and James 858. That is +354 for Greene and +34 for James — exactly 388 additional House 154 votes, matching the check-in gap the state flagged.

Statewide unofficial totals on the SOS site after the upload: Greene 10,193 (50.65%) to James 9,932 (49.35%) — a lead of 261 votes on the live board, after the office’s announcement that the flip put Greene ahead by about 262 from a prior 58-vote deficit.

“That is unacceptable”

Raffensperger did not shrug it off as a harmless glitch.

“Our office identified a significant discrepancy, alerted county officials, and uncovered a failure to properly upload election results,” he said in the Secretary of State release quoted by WCTV, Atlanta News First, and CBS Atlanta. “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 probe, per the release, will examine how the memory card was overlooked, whether required election procedures were followed, and what corrective measures are needed so it does not happen again. Seminole County has until Monday to certify.

Why one rural card matters to the new House majority

District 154 covers a stretch of southwest Georgia counties including Seminole, Early, Miller, Randolph, and parts of the Dougherty/Albany area. Greene, a Cuthbert Republican and longtime incumbent, had been one of the Legislature’s most vulnerable GOP holdouts after Democrats’ midterm sweep of Georgia statewide offices.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that if the new lead holds, Democrats would be left with 92 seats in the 180-member Georgia House — just one above the 91 needed for a majority — narrowing the chamber edge they just won before they even take power. James, a Dougherty County commissioner, had not immediately commented when the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reached him Friday.

None of that erases the operational fact the state’s own canvass exposed: hundreds of Election Day votes sat on a card that did not make it into the reported totals until after a statewide check-in audit forced the county to look again.

Bottom line: Georgia’s safeguards flagged a 388-ballot hole in Seminole County. Uploading the forgotten memory card flipped House District 154 from a Democrat up 58 to a Republican up about 262 — and Raffensperger is investigating how an Election Day card went unuploaded in the first place.