The Georgia Secretary of State has ordered a recount in the District 50 State Senate race between Bo Hatchett and Stacy Hall. The recount will be held Monday, August 31, in all eight counties in the district.
Hall formally requested the recount on Wednesday, August 26, the same day that Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger certified the election results.
Hatchett beat Hall by 37 votes out of the 24,947 votes that were cast districtwide. That’s a difference of 0.14%. State election law allows for recounts in races where the margin of victory is less than 1%.
In his letter to Raffensperger, Hall stated “I have heard a number of alarming reports on how absentee ballots were handled in Stephens County for the Aug. 11 election. I can confirm that many voters who requested absentee ballots never received them while others received absentee ballots as late as the Monday prior to the election making it impossible to meet the deadline.”
“Nothing changed”
“This exact thing happened to me in April 2019 in Stephens County and it appears nothing’s been done to fix it,” says former House District 28 Representative Dan Gasaway who tracked absentee ballot requests among his supporters in the third re-run of his race against Chris Erwin. He says only a fraction of those who requested ballots ever received them.
Gasaway did not file a legal challenge at that time because he had already successfully sued twice to overturn elections proving a series of election errors occurred in Habersham, Banks, and Stephens counties. Each time he won in court, the Republican backlash against him grew stronger. GOP elected officials and voters banded together against Gasaway, labeling him a sore loser, claiming his lawsuits were nothing more than “sour grapes.”
Ultimately, by the time the three-term incumbent ran his third race against Erwin, the die was cast. Gasaway was booted from office by many of the same political operatives who are now crying foul over mismanaged elections. Stacy Hall and his fellow Habersham County commissioners led the charge back then, joining with commissioners from Banks and Stephens counties to defend the outcomes of the first two Gasaway-Erwin races. Habersham County alone spent nearly $59,000 in taxpayer dollars on their joint defense.
“We brought the errors to the forefront in all three counties,” Gasaway tells Now Habersham, “but nothing changed.”
Election complaint filed
On August 18, one week after the District 50 GOP primary runoff, Bo Hatchett declared victory. He said at the time his campaign “has no reason to believe that a recount would alter the outcome of this race.”
That same week, the Stephens County Republican Party executive committee filed a complaint against the Stephens County Elections Office with the State Elections Division.
“It is an egregious issue when communication and lack of transparency are so fractured that the voters end up 1) unable to vote due to not receiving their absentee ballots and/or not receiving them timely 2) that questions regarding break in process were not answered 3) failure in communication with the voters is so fractured and lacks the required transparency OCGA & local legislation provides,” party chair Rebeckah Bennett stated in a press release.
It’s not clear what, if anything, the State Elections Board will do about the complaint. Two investigations that were opened during the Gasaway-Erwin race still have not been resolved, two years after the initial primary was run.
Now, it’s Hall supporters who are calling for fair, fraud-free elections. Asked his reaction to that, Gasaway asks rhetorically, “Do you think Stacy Hall cares about election integrity now?”
