The Georgia State Election Board last week voted to send to the Georgia Attorney General for further investigation a complaint filed against the Oconee County Board of Elections and Registration about qualification for the 2024 Watkinsville Council races.
The Board took that action after former Mayor Bob Smith told the Board that three candidates wanted to run for the three Watkinsville Council seats in 2024 but did not qualify because the date of qualification had changed from past years and because the interested persons did not know of the change.
Oconee County Attorney Daniel Haygood, in a letter he sent to the Board prior to the meeting, acknowledged that qualifying for Watkinsville elections was held incorrectly in 2020 and 2022.
Haygood said in that letter that the qualifying dates for the 2024 election were held consistent with state law and that proper notice of the qualifying dates had been given.
State Elections Board Chair John Fervier read Haygood’s letter into the record after Smith had made his comments.
Michael Dougherty with the Secretary of State Investigations Division, who referred the case to the state Elections Board, had found evidence that Oconee County did make proper notification of the qualifying dates.
The vote to send the case to the Attorney General was 3 to 0, with Members Janice W. Johnson, Salleigh Grubbs, and Janelle King voting in favor. Sara Tindall Ghazal, the only Democrat on the Board, did not attend the meeting.
Details Of Complaint
According to Investigator Dougherty, state law requires that qualification for municipal elections in even number years be the same as for the general elections. That would have been March in 2024.
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| Screen Shot Smith 2/18/2026 |
Qualification for municipal nonpartisan elections in odd years is to be held in August.
Terms of office in Watkinsville are two years, so elections are held every year.
Dougherty said that his investigation “found that the City of Watkinsville municipal candidate qualifying period was held during the month of August every year (both odd and even-numbered years) dating back to at least 2020.”
“In 2024, the City of Watkinsville municipal candidate qualifying period was held in March,” consistent with state law, he found.
“With respect to the making of proper notification of the municipal qualifying dates,” he wrote, “there is evidence to suggest that Oconee County did make proper notifications of the qualifying dates.”
Haygood’s Letter
Haygood, in his Feb. 10 letter to the Board, said the Oconee County Board of Elections and Registration “agrees with most of the findings of the investigation but wishes to offer an explanation of the circumstances involving the 2020 and 2022 elections.”
Prior to 2013, the City of Watkinsville held its own elections and qualifications, he said.
In 2013, the county and the city signed a contract that provided that the county Election Board would conduct elections for Watkinsville, but the city would continue to handle qualifications, Haygood wrote.
In July of 2020, the county Election Board also agreed to handle qualification for Watkinsville, he said.
In 2020, the city of Watkinsville should have conducted qualifying in the Spring but did not do so, Haygood said. After the county took over responsibility for qualification in July of that year, it held those qualifications in August, as the city had done historically, according to Haygood.
In 2022, the county Board of Elections and Registration again held qualification in August, though the qualifications should have been held in the spring with the other qualifications for the November election, Haygood explained.
When the current Director of Elections and Registration Sharon Gregg assumed her position in Sept. 12, 2022, she began a review of county “processes and procedures,” Haygood wrote.
As a result of that review, Haygood said, “we determined the process had been incorrect in 2020 and 2022, and likely for a long time prior to that when the qualifications were conducted by Watkinsville.”
Elections were held correctly in 2024, he said, and “all required notices were given.”
“We respectively ask that any penalty be mitigated by the fact that the OCBOE (Oconee County Board Of Elections) and its Director of Elections discovered and corrected this mistake on its own and that the prior history of qualifications in Watkinsville was a long-standing tradition believed at the time by all to be correct,” Haygood wrote.
Smith’s Comments And Response
Dougherty’s investigative report does not identify the source of the complaint the Secretary of State Office received “about a change in the City of Watkinsville’s 2024 Mayoral and City Council qualifying dates,” but Smith chose to speak on behalf of the complaint before the State Election Board meeting on Feb. 18.
“The 2024 qualifying has come and gone,” Smith said. “That's water under the dam, over the dam. But the belief locally by some that paid attention to this matter in 2024 was that it was a rigged system. Nobody knew about it.”
“The local paper only has a handful of local subscribers,” he continued, “and nothing was done. And since 1983, when the charter was created the last time, elections qualifying has been in August, sometime the latter part of July, and August.”
“And in the book that I sent earlier, probably two three months ago, it shows seven years of August qualifying, and all of a sudden, I keep using the term all of a sudden, in March of 2024 it's qualifying for four council seats.” (It was for Posts 3, 4, and 5.)
“And this is the first time that I've ever seen in my---I grew up in Watkinsville. I've never seen it otherwise,” he said.
Smith said he had written to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Gov. Brian Kemp, and Attorney General Chris Carr.
“I didn't hear from anybody,” he said. “All I was asking for, please reopen qualifying because nobody knew about it. I knew about it because I'm paying attention, but the people asked me. We had three people that were going to run in August.”
More From Smith And Response
Since Watkinsville Council terms are for two years, qualifying for Post 3, 4, and 5 begins on Monday.
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| Fervier, Johnson, King (L-R) Screen Shot 2/18/2026 |
“We're going to be awake this time,” Smith said. “Now, can I get somebody to run? Probably not. Because what's happening is people see that these gamed systems, they say, ‘Hey, I don't want to be part of that.’”
“I was a mayor of Watkinsville for a year and two and a half months,” Smith said. “I resigned because I saw too much stuff that didn't settle with me. I call it--I'm going to try to be careful with this--I call it dishonest wheeling and dealing and wink wink, nod nod type of government.”
“And I saw that as mayor,” Smith said, “And that's the reason I resigned. I didn't like what I saw in the legislature.”
Smith began his term as mayor in January of 2020 and stepped down in March of 2021, saying the “unelected city manager has taken over the responsibilities and duties that once belonged to the mayor.”
Smith had represented Oconee County in the legislature from 1999 to 2010, when he did not seek re-election.
Election Board Member King thanked Smith for his presentation, saying “I do think we have a shortage of people who have the integrity that you are exhibiting particularly in our elected offices.”
“It breaks my heart that you're not involved as mayor or that you resigned, but it's not unusual,” Board Member Grubbs said. “I see lots of people that get up to this point with it and they say, ‘I can't make a difference. I can't change it..”
“But I personally don't feel that God gave us a spirit of defeat,” she said. “That he gave us a spirit of get on the battlefield and he'll take care of the rest. So, thank you for being on the battlefield now, and bringing this to our attention.”
In response to a question from Grubbs, Smith said he was asking for someone to “reach in and have some type of enforcement of the election laws.”
Grubbs made the motion to refer the case to the Attorney General. Johnson seconded the motion, and the two were joined by King in the positive vote.
Board Chair John Fervier did not vote.
Video
The embedded video below is on the State Elections Board YouTube channel.
Smith began speaking at 10:15:04 in the video.
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