The Oconee County Board of Elections and Registration, meeting on Monday (June 22) for certification of the June 16 Primary Runoff Election, voted to tell the county’s two representatives in the Georgia House of its opposition to legislation passed in the Senate a few days earlier.
The Senate had passed Senate Bill 3 EX on Saturday (June 20) that would have required Election Boards in the state’s 159 counties to hand count prior to certification the results for the top two elected offices in each election.
The Oconee County Board of Elections and Registration said it was not feasible to meet that deadline.
The bill, designed to postpone until January of 2028 the requirement that QR Codes be removed from the Georgia ballot, had been amended on the Senate floor on Saturday to include the hand count provision.
Sen. Greg Dolezal of Atlanta, who won the runoff on June 16 to be the Republican Party nominee for lieutentant governor, had offered the amendment.
On Tuesday (June 23), the House stripped Dolezal’s amended from the Senate bill, passed the bill, and sent it back to the Senate, where it also was approved as the special session of the General Assembly came to an end.
The final version of the bill does include a provision for hand counting of votes, but only in the case where one of the top two elections on the ballot was won by less than a half percentage point. The hand count does not have to be completed prior to certification of results.
Oconee County two representatives in the Georgia House, split their vote on the final bill sent back to the Senate, with Republican Houston Gaines from House District 120 voting in favor of the revised bill and Democrat Eric Gisler from House District 121 voting against it.
Both voted in favor of transmitting the approved the legislation to the Senate for final action.
Board Action
The Oconee County Board of Elections and Registration on Monday officially certified the results from the June 16 run off, including those for Lieutenant Governor.
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| Hanley (Left) And Davis 6/22/2026 |
In Oconee County, voters had slightly preferred John F. Kennedy (50.7 percent) over Dolezal (49.3 percent). Statewide, Dolezal won with 54.2 percent of the vote.
Following discussion of the June 19 runoff, Sharon Gregg, Director of Elections and Registration for Oconee County, reviewed for the Board an email she had sent to the Board prior to the meeting on the amendment Dolezal had offered from the Senate floor on Saturday. The Senate approved the bill that day with the Dolezal amendment.
“So they want us to do, prior to certification, at the local level, they want us for every election to do a manual recount, so a hand recount, of the top two races on the ballot,” Gregg said.
“Is there a provision in there to push certification back?” Board Chair Jay Hanley asked.
“There's not,” Gregg responded. Certification must take place with six days of an election.
“Well, in my opinion, it's not practical,” Hanley responded.
Board Member Ken Davis, who represents the Democratic Party on the Oconee County Election Board, suggested the Board send a statement of opposition “to the hand count measure.”
“The whole idea of the risk-limit audit is to do this exact thing,” Kirk Shook, the Republican Party representative on the Board, said.
Jennifer Stone, Assistant Director of Elections and Registration, told the Board that “in 2020, when we did the full paper hand count, we had four audit boards, and it was over 25,000 ballots, and it took three days.”
“So if you're talking about two races, then it's going to be double that or more, depending on how many ballots you've got. So six days,” she said.
The Board authorized Hanley to send a statement of opposition “to our legislators and the pertinent legislators” on the House Committee studying the Senate bill.
The four members of the Board present–Davis, Hanley, Shook, and Shami Jones–approved. Board Member Tammy Gilland was absent.
Letter From Board
On the evening of June 22, Hanley wrote to Gaines, who represents Oconee County in House District 120, and Gisler, who represents the county in House District 121.
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| Davis And Gregg (6/22/2026) |
“As Chairman of the Oconee County Board of Elections and Registration, I have been authorized by a vote of our bipartisan board to urge you to oppose the Senate amendment to SB 3 EX requiring a full hand recount of ballots for the top two statewide races prior to county certification,” Hanley wrote.
“This mandate is not operationally feasible for county election officials, would create significant delays in the certification process, and risks undermining public confidence by producing competing election results,” Hanley continued.
“Georgia already has established procedures to ensure the accuracy, security, and integrity of election outcomes, and this additional requirement would place an unnecessary burden on counties without providing a corresponding benefit,” Hanley said.
“Our Board respectfully asks that you support election policies that are practical, accurate, and achievable for counties across Georgia, and oppose this amendment to SB 3 EX,” the letter continued.
“Thank you for your consideration and your continued support of fair, efficient, and secure elections,” the letter said in ending.
In an email on June 22, Hanley said he sent the letter to Gaines and Gisler as well as to House Speaker Jon Burns and Speaker Pro Tem Jan Jones.
“I also sent the email to the leadership of the House Governmental Affairs Committee, which has jurisdiction over election bills: Rep. Victor Anderson of Cornelia (Chair), Rep. Brad Thomas of Holly Springs (Vice Chair) and Rep. Tim Fleming of Covington (Secretary),” Hanley wrote.
“Finally, the email was sent to the leadership of the House Rules Committee, which determines what bills go to the floor for a vote: Rep. Butch Parrish of Swainsboro (Chair), Rep. Rob Leverett of Elberton (Vice Chair) and Rep. Trey Kelley of Cedartown (Secretary),” Hanley’s email message continued.
Gaines And Gisler
Senate Bill 3 EX was the sole piece of legislation passed by the General Assembly in the special session called by Gov. Brian Kemp.
It did address one of the requests by Kemp, pushing the deadline for removing the QR Code from the ballot back to 2028.
It also created the Election Equipment Specifications and Standards Committee “that shall recommend the specifications, standards, and requirements for a new uniform system of election equipment based upon hand marked paper ballots produced utilizing ballot on demand printing.”
And it added the requirement that if, “in any qualified contest that appears as the first or second contest on a ballot, the difference between the number of votes received by a candidate who has been declared elected to an office in such qualified contest and the number of votes received by any other candidate or candidates not declared so elected” is “not more than one-half of 1 percent of the total votes which were cast in such qualified contest...no later than two business days following the date for certification of the election results...the Secretary of State shall direct that a manual recount of all ballots cast in such qualified contest be performed in all counties.”
The House took two votes on Senate Bill 3 EX, and I sent email messages to Gaines and Gisler asking them about the votes.
Gisler wrote back and said he voted against the Senate Bill when it came to the floor “because while it did remove the automatic hand recount from the top 2 races, it still kept the hand recounts, triggered by the contest being within .5% and was very ambiguous about which recount would be used for the official count.”
“It was slightly better than the version that the Board sent me a letter about, urging me to vote against it,” he wrote.
The second vote was on “a motion to immediately transmit it to the Senate,” Gisler said.
“Although I think it is bad legislation, it had already passed and without immediate transmission I believe the normal procedure would have required us to wait another day,” he said. “We had already wasted enough time and taxpayer money.”
Gaines did not respond to my email. He voted in favor of Senate Bill 3 EX and in favor of transmittal immediate transmittal to the Sente.
Video
I was not able to attend the meeting on June 22, and Harold Thompson agreed to video record it for me.
Unfortunately, Thompson got held up due to road construction and was about 10 minutes late for the meeting.
Discussion of the legislation being considered by the General Assembly begins at 7:20 in the video.
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