ROME, Ga. — Floyd County's Board of Elections spent all day Tuesday rescanning thousands of ballots that were not counted on election night.
This was discovered when the state ordered all counties to retally every ballot by hand, as part of an audit for the presidential race.
"During early voting we had a scanner that on October 24 jammed," said Dr. Melanie Conrad with the Board.
"We replaced that with another scanner and in that process we had memory cards that when we went to upload the information, somehow they weren't getting transferred appropriately into the software. We don't know yet why that happened and that will be part of a continuing investigation," Conrad said.
Luke Martin, Chairman of the Floyd County Republican Party, added that about 5,000 ballots were taken out of the jammed scanner and moved to a different one to be re-scanned.
"The problem is approximately 2,600 of those were not re-scanned," Martin said. "We don't know if that was an issue with Dominion Software not accepting properly scanned ballots or whether it was the election workers who just didn't scan them."
While the exact cause of this mishap is still under investigation by Dominion and the Secretary's Office, Conrad said the problem was isolated to the early voting location at the Floyd County Administrative Building in Downtown Rome.
Election officials decided to re-scan the more than 8,100 early voting ballots that were cast in that location, which includes the 2,600 ballots that were unaccounted.
"The numbers of hand counts matches what now has been scanned today so we know that every vote now has been counted we just don't know quite the results of that count yet," she said.
Election leaders insist there is no evidence of fraud or intentional misconduct. However, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is asking for the Chief Clerk of Elections, Robert Brady to step down in the midst of this issue.
Conrad could not comment on that matter, but did say there will be a meeting with the Executive Board on Thursday to discuss a personnel issue.
"We are going to have a special called meeting, we are going to go into Executive Session to discuss a personnel issue and that is a private meeting that the public won't be a part of until we come out and announce the decisions that have been made," she added.
Brady was not present Tuesday during the rescanning. Conrad said he was in quarantine due to an exposure to COVID-19.
"It's disturbing," said Rome resident Cullin Carlen who voted absentee. "It's not something you want to hear. There's a lot of unrest in this election as it is so right now more uncertainty adding on to that situation is not something I want to hear as a voter in general."