Thomas wins again in Recount of Franklin County Sheriff’s Race

By MJ Kneiser, WLHR

A recount of the Franklin County Sheriff’s race is over and the votes came back almost the same as last Tuesday’s election results.

Wednesday morning’s recount began at 9a at the Franklin County Board of Elections and Registrations office in Carnesville.

The recount was overseen by Election Supervisor Gina Kesler, and the Franklin County Board of Elections and a representative from the Franklin County Democratic Party.

The results Wednesday confirmed incumbent Sheriff Steve Thomas will serve another four years as Sheriff.

After four hours of counting ballots from seven precincts as well as all of the absentee ballots, both Thomas and challenger Scott Andrews actually gained one vote each.

The final recount was Thomas with 2,878 votes to Andrews’ 2,849 votes – a difference of 29 votes. Summary of Sheriff’s Race Recount

The recount showed the total number of votes cast was 5,727 – up from last Tuesday’s count of 5,724 – a difference of three votes.

Board of Elections Chair Doug Kidd said two of those votes came in from overseas after Tuesday’s election.

“After election night we received two ballots that came in. They were overseas military ballots. Both federal law and state law requires us to accept those ballots if they come on the Friday after election day and they did. They came in timely. We opened those votes. They were validly cast and we counted those towards the vote total. Both of those overseas military ballots voted for Steve Thomas. So then, his vote total went from a 26-vote victory to a 28-vote victory,” Kidd said.

The third vote came from an absentee ballot, Kidd said, that had not been counted on Election Night.

“Today when we started the recount, we discovered there was one ballot that was not counted on Election Night. And the reason why it was not counted is that often times when we get absentee ballots, people will not mark them correctly. In those cases, State law requires us to try to determine the intent of the voter. Sometimes they (the voter) will start to fill in one bubble and then stop and fully fill in a second bubble,” Kidd explained. So what we had to do is take the old ballot that will not scan properly and then we, as a board, had to sit down and try to determine the intent of the voter. Then, we will fill in a brand new ballot for it. That’s what state law requires us to do. And on the ballot that the person submits we have to mark ‘original’ at the top of it and then the one that we fill in is the one that we run. Well inadvertently, one of the members of the board put ‘original’ on the ballot the voter submitted and also on the one we filed as well. And so it didn’t get cast. We caught that today and we ran it,” he concluded.

Another issue, according to Kidd was the scanners began re-running all of the election results instead of just the Sheriff’s race.

Kidd said they discovered that about an hour into the recount process, stopped, and re-programmed the machines to only scan the Sheriff’s race. Then they started over.

“The results speak for themselves and I’d just like to thank everybody who voted for me for their support,” Thomas said after the recount.

After last Tuesday night’s election results, Andrews turned in the required paperwork the following morning requesting a recount.

According to Kidd, Georgia law is not clear on whether Andrews can ask for a second recount.  He said, however, it is likely that Andrews does have the option to file a lawsuit in Superior Court and ask for Wednesday’s results to be overturned.

WLHR News asked Andrews for a comment after the results were posted but he declined.

Sheriff Thomas’s sixth term will begin on January 1, 2020.