Fulton County will hold a recount of all last Tuesday’s election results on Monday, Nov. 13, the day before the election is to be certified.
“This action is consistent with commitment by the Department of Registration & Elections to review several races affected by recent redistricting,” a county statement says. “Furthermore, it will provide additional verification of results for races requiring a runoff in December.”
Georgia does not have an automatic recount law, but a candidate in a very close race can ask for one — or election officials can order one if there appears to be a discrepancy or error in the returns.
In this case the Fulton County Board of Registration & Elections chose to hold a recount.
Some voters in East Point’s city council election and in Atlanta school board races said they were given ballots for the wrong districts, following last year’s redrawing of lines. In East Point, the problem was known to affect about a dozen early in-person voters, whose ballots couldn’t be recast, according to the county.
East Point and South Fulton both reported problems uploading voter information to tablets at polling places on Election Day, Elections Director Nadine Williams said.
She and board chair Patrise Perkins-Hooker both said beforehand that the county would review the outcome in affected races prior to the Nov. 14 election certification. But Williams said if a problem was big enough to potentially change the results of a race, it would take a directive from the Secretary of State to do anything about it.
Georgia law says if no candidate gets an outright majority in a municipality that doesn’t allow election by a plurality of votes, a runoff between the two top vote-getters will be held 28 days after the general election. This year, that would be Tuesday, Dec. 5.
According to unofficial election results that law appears to apply to six of Tuesday’s races:
- The District 7 seat on the Atlanta school board, for which incumbent Tamara Jones got 49% of the vote to challenger Alfred “Shivy” Brooks’ 46% in a three-way race.
- The Ward B council seat in East Point, a four-way race in which challenger Carrie Ziegler got 42% to incumbent Josette Bailey’s 39%.
- The Ward C council seat in East Point where incumbent Myron Cook took 38% of the vote, followed by challenger Tremayne Mitchell with 32% in a four-way race.
- The Ward D council seat in East Point, a three-way race in which LaTonya Martin Rogers got 48% to incumbent Stephanie Gordon’s 44%.
- Post 2 on Roswell City Council, where Allen Sells got 46% to Michael Dal Cerro’s 32% in a three-way race.
- The District 5 seat on South Fulton city council, for which incumbent Corey Reeves got 38% of the vote to Kalvin Bennett’s 31% — though Bennett only edged out Keosha Bell by one vote in unofficial results.
The recount will take place at 1 p.m. Monday at the county’s new centralized elections hub in Union City.
“The recount will be held to confirm the accuracy of the election results before Election certification,” the official notice says.
