President Donald Trump closed the gap on Democrat Joe Biden’s lead in Georgia on Monday by nearly 800 votes after edging out Biden by a nearly 2-1 ratio in a batch of 2,600 ballots that were discovered in Floyd County.
Gabriel Sterling, who oversaw the implementation of the new statewide election system for the state, said that the unofficial breakdown of ballots was 1,643 for Trump, 865 for Biden and 16 for Libertarian Jo Jorgensen. The mistake happened because election officials reportedly missed uploading a memory card containing the votes to a ballot counting machine.
NEW–@GabrielSterling just released the official vote breakdown from the ballots previously uncounted in Floyd County:
Trump–1,643
Biden–865
Jorgensen–16
TOTAL–2,524@FOX5Atlanta— Claire Simms (@Claire_FOX5) November 17, 2020
“The Georgia Secretary of State is asking for the executive director of the Floyd County Board of Elections, Robert Brady, to step down after 2,600 ballots were left uncounted prior to the county’s initial certification,” Fox 5 Atlanta reported. “The error was discovered on Sunday during the third day of the state’s audit.”
Officials were quick to caution that the additional votes for Trump were not enough to change the outcome of the presidential election in the state.
The Daily Wire reported on the development earlier in the day:
The recovered votes may also help out GOP Sen. David Perdue, who is roughly 14,000 votes away from securing 50% of the vote in his bid for reelection and avoiding a runoff against Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff.
“It’s very concerning,” Martin said. “But this doesn’t appear to be a widespread issue. I’m glad the audit revealed it, and it’s important that all votes are counted.”
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office said the votes were missed because election workers failed to upload a memory card containing the votes into a ballot counting machine. The Floyd County discrepancy does not appear to be a widespread issue, the office of the secretary of state said.
Floyd County has had other problems tallying votes this election cycle. About half of a batch of 5,000 ballots were not initially recorded after being missed by scanner.