Two county boards of elections recounted all of the ballots in the Atlanta mayoral contest.

The outcome still put Keisha Lance Bottoms on top. In fact, just eleven ballots changed with the net impact of a single vote difference. Ms. Bottoms, a city council member maintained her margin of just over 800 votes.

The challenger Mary Norwood, who also serves on the city council, was not happy with the way the recount was conducted. She complained before hastily leaving the elections building, that staffers simply put the ballots back through the machine.

Norwood wanted ballots inspected and hand counted. The elections director, Richard Barron, answered her complaints saying staffers did a hand count a small percentage of paper ballots, all within the law.

But Norwood told reporters about another issue that could put a wrinkle in the way the vote was conducted. It has to do with annexation. She said she learned only in the past few hours that a state court struck down a city annexation that gave several hundred voters a chance to be residents of the city.

The issue decided by the court had nothing to do with the election. However, if the annexation of a black enclave in south Atlanta called Loch Lomond was not done properly, then Norwood said those voters cast illegal ballots through no fault of their own.


Is Norwood going to ask a judge to stay the election? She declined to be specific as to her next move but she promised she has another card to play.

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