Officials: Hand tally of presidential race finds new ballots in one county

SAVANNAH, Ga. (WTOC/AP) - Roughly 2,500 ballots that were not counted in one Georgia county have been found during the statewide hand-count audit.

According to the Secretary of State’s Office, the ballots were discovered in Floyd County in northwest Georgia.

Nearly 5 million votes were cast in the presidential election in Georgia, and Democrat Joe Biden had been leading Republican President Donald Trump by about 14,000 votes.

The Associated Press reports the Floyd County election board chairman said he didn’t have an immediate breakdown of the newly discovered ballots, but unofficial results previously reported showed Trump with 70% of the county’s votes to 28.4% for Biden.

“The reason you do an audit is to find this kind of thing,” said Gabriel Sterling, who oversaw the implementation of the new statewide election system for the secretary of state’s office.

Sterling said this appears to be an isolated problem and that there are “no fundamental changes” in other counties.

The Associated Press reports county election board Chairman Tom Rees said it appears the roughly 2,500 ballots were cast during in-person early voting, but election officials weren’t sure how they were missed.

According to the Associated Press report, the county elections office suffered several setbacks, including a top official being infected by the coronavirus, and it seems proper procedures weren’t followed when the results were tabulated by machine, Sterling said. But the county had the paper ballots and caught the problem during the hand tally, he said.

The Secretary of State is calling for the Floyd County elections supervisor to resign.