Election-night results showed Rep. Gerald Greene, a Cuthbert Republican, trailing Democrat Harry James by fewer than 100 votes in the District 154 state House race.

On Friday, officials found a previously missing election machine memory card and uploaded its contents, and Greene now leads by 262 votes — the secretary of state's website on Saturday showed Greene with 10,193 votes to James's 9,932, a difference of 261.

The reversal turned on a routine post-election review in Seminole County that compared voter check-ins against ballots cast, uncovering roughly 388 more voters than recorded ballots.

The surprise is not just that one race reversed, but what it means for power in Atlanta.

Democrats swept into a state House majority for the first time in two decades on election night, flipping 13 Republican seats while losing two of their own and appearing on track for 92 seats — well clear of the 91 needed to pass legislation.

Greene's resurrection means that cushion could shrink to just a single vote, and the race also decides who represents voters across nine counties in Georgia's southwest corner.

Georgia's safeguards caught the problem before certification.

According to Raffensperger's office, the routine review identified a discrepancy between votes recorded in Seminole County and the amount uploaded to the state, prompting a search that located the memory card containing 388 votes that had never been uploaded.

"This oversight didn't just affect the numbers — it changed who was leading an election," Raffensperger said in a statement, calling it unacceptable and pledging to find out exactly how it happened.

He added that the guardrails worked as designed: the office identified a significant discrepancy, alerted county officials, and uncovered the failure to properly upload results.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — the official who rebuffed President Donald Trump's attempts to overturn Georgia's 2020 election results — opened a formal investigation into why the card was never uploaded to Seminole County's election management system on Nov. 3.

Per Bloomberg, the probe focuses on that failure, and the office is also weighing whether corrective measures need to be taken, according to Democracy Docket.

"Every vote matters, and in a close election, even a relatively small number of unreported ballots can change the outcome," Raffensperger said.

County election officials have until Monday to certify the election, so Greene's 262-vote lead could still shift as the process concludes. Democrats' margin may also change in another unresolved contest: Rep.

Mike Cheokas, R-Americus, failed to win a majority in a three-way race and must now face Democrat Ethan Wolfe, the second-highest vote-getter, in a runoff. Per The Current, if Cheokas loses, Democrats could hold a two-vote cushion instead of one.

Either way, the margin for error in the new Georgia House is now vanishingly thin.