BREAKING NEWS: Secretary of State’s Office clears up conflicting details regarding certification of Stephens County votes

WNEG News told you earlier about two conflicting stories regarding the certification of the August 11^th election results in Stephens County.

Stephens County Registrar Eureka Gober says the issue occurred on the Secretary of State’s side; however, Stephens County Board of Election Republican Representative Lori Jones said a representative from the Secretary of State’s Office said it was due to a user-error.

This afternoon WNEG News was given a copy of an email from Robin Carr, from the Secretary of State’s Office, sent to County Administrator Phyllis Ayers explaining what really happened during the certification of the vote.

Carr writes quote: “I hope this email finds you well. I wanted to take a moment to reach out to you to clarify what was has transpired regarding the certification of the election on August 11^th for Stephens County as it seems I have been misquoted and want to make it clear what occurred.

“On Monday, August 24, as part of our good practices to ensure that all Counties have certified and that we had their official and complete results, I noticed that Stephens County was not showing as certified in our system. I called the office after discovering this to walk them through the steps of how to complete this process so that the State could certify. Upon speaking with Ms. Eureka, Ms. April (April Roberts, Stephens County Deputy Registrar) and the tech Michael, they advised there was an error and they were not able to click the button to be able to show as complete. Ms. April did advise that she was unfamiliar with this process as well as Michael, however, as the tech, I would not expect that Michael would have ever seen this before as this typically falls on the County employees to complete. I went in as Stephens County on my side and received the same error. At this time, I reached out to our systems guy who advised that he had never seen this error before and walked me through the steps to complete this on our side so that they could show as complete and we could move forward with certification. At this time, I thought this was the end of this as it had been corrected and I had made the systems person aware so he could look into it. Sadly, as I have been made aware this morning, I was very wrong.

“Monday afternoon I received a call from Ms. Lori (Jones) and Ms. Rebeckah (Rebeckah Bennett, chairwoman of the Stephens County GOP) who had received an email from Ms. Eureka advising of the glitch, who advised me that they felt she was lying and wanted to know the truth about what had transpired. I went over the above with them and thought we were on the same page that there was a glitch and that they were not in any trouble that we were only doing our due diligence at the state to ensure that everyone had taken all the proper steps for us to be able to certify. Unfortunately, this was far from the case, as demonstrated in their email to Ms. Eureka.

“As of this morning, it has been brought to my attention that they have now gone to the news with this. This was a very small matter that was handled Monday morning that has now progressed into something it definitely never had to be. I apologize for bringing you into this as well; however, I did want it in writing and very clear exactly what happened to hopefully put an end to all of this as quickly as possible. If you have any questions or need anything further from me, please let me know and I will be happy to help in any way possible,” end quote.

WNEG News will continue to follow this story and bring you additional details as they become available.