A Georgia state House member won’t face a new election after a judge ruled there wasn’t enough evidence to prove voters who received the wrong ballots swayed the race’s outcome.
Senior Judge Gary McCorvey on Monday declined to order a new election in state House District 128, where Democratic incumbent Mack Jackson beat Republican challenger Tracy Wheeler by 48 votes out of a total of 27,804 votes cast in November.
Wheeler sued to force a new election, arguing some people who lived outside the district improperly got ballots for House District 128, while a smaller number of voters living inside the district didn’t receive ballots. Those errors may have stemmed from errors in reassigning voters to the correct districts after redistricting.
McCorvey found that 58 voters got the wrong ballot. That would be enough to change the outcome of the race, depending on how people voted. But the judge found there wasn’t enough testimony indicating whether each person in question voted in the House race, saying Wheeler hadn’t met the high bar for overturning an election.
“Succinctly stated, voters being provided with an opportunity to vote in the wrong district does not equate to proof by a preponderance of evidence that such voters actually tainted the election by voting in the election at issue,” McCorvey wrote.
