Did You Know? Voters Can View Actual Ballots from Local Elections on SOS Website

A candidate who ran for Franklin County Commissioner for District 1 recently told the Board of Elections he was not satisfied with the way the recount he requested of the June 18 run-off election was conducted.

In the May 21 General Primary, Owenby had been ahead of challenger local veterinarian Wanda Thompson by a vote of 1,337 to Thompson’s 1,159 votes.

But that did not make the required 50% plus 1 needed to win.

That prompted a run-off on June 18 where the tables turned and Thompson narrowly beat out Owenby by just 16 votes.

Owenby then petitioned the Board of Elections office for a recount which was conducted on June 27.

After an all-day recount process in which every ballot from all seven precincts was scanned, the results came out the same and were verified at last week’s Franklin County Board of Elections meeting.

At that meeting, Owenby told the Board of Elections that he had asked for a hand recount of the June ballots, not a rescan of the ballots.

Owenby said he later found out that under Georgia law hand recounts are only allowed under certain specific circumstances and did not apply to the June run-off.

He then sent an open records request to County Attorney Bubba Samuels to see the ballots from the June run-off election and asked if the fee for that could be waived.

County Attorneys Bubba and Jack Samuels were present at the Board of Elections meeting.

Jack Samuels said after the June run-off, the ballots were sent to the Franklin County Clerk of Court office and then on to the Secretary of State’s office but could be viewed online on the Secretary of State’s website. The news was a revelation.

WLHR News checked with the Secretary of State’s office and the ballots from the June 18 run-off in Franklin County are now available to view online.

There is a page on the Secretary of State’s website where anyone can access ballots after an election by putting in the year of the election, the date of the election, and the county.

It’s also possible to download all of the ballots that were cast for that election.

Those results can be emailed to you as a ZIP file.

Both the QR code on the ballot and how the person voted are listed but without the voter’s name or personal information, which under Georgia law must remain secret.

That web page address is: https://sos.ga.gov/ballot-image.