Gray may have had a contested election before last week, but if so, no one involved in the process remembers it.

Rallie ‘Rooster’ Cogburn filed a petition to contest the Dec. 1 election results in Jones County Superior Court Tuesday, Dec. 8, one week after the event. Cogburn had five days following the certification of the election to file the protest.

Incumbent Loretta Lipsey won the Dec. 1 runoff over Cogburn with a vote of 246 to 241, a difference of five votes. The tapes generated by the two optical scan machines that tallied the ballots show three votes unaccounted for from one machine and two from the other. The total number of ballots cast in the election was 492 and the number of votes tallied was 487.

The challenger asked for a recount election night as soon as the totals were announced.

Cogburn said his only regret in contesting the election was having to name Gray Election Superintendent Jamie Lewandowski in the suit. He said this was his first election, her first as superintendent, and they were both learning.

“At this point in time, I don’t expect to win the election. It’s the principle of the thing,” he said.

After the petition was filed, the matter was in the hands of Clerk of Superior Court Bart Jackson, who said the contested election was a first for him.

Jackson said he talked to Chief Judge William Prior for guidance, who, coincidently, was the appointed judge for a contested election several years ago in Dodge County.

The clerk said he sent notice Dec. 11 to Lewandowski, who was named as the defendant in the lawsuit. Lewandowski has 10 days to file an answer to the petition. Jackson said defendants normally have 30 days to answer a complaint, but the contested election has a shorter allotted time period in order to get the matter in front of a judge as soon as possible.

Jackson’s next step was to call the District Eight Court District and have a judge outside of the Ocmulgee Circuit appointed to the case. He said he called the administrator Thursday and was told Dec. 14 that Chief Judge H. Gibbs Flanders from Dublin has been appointed to hear the petition.

Jackson said the date for the hearing will be set within 20 days. The judge may make a decision that day or it could be bound over for deliberation.

A recount is mandatory if the margin between the candidates is less than 1 percent, and the margin between Lipsey and Cogburn was 1.02 percent. The minute percentage amount over the 1 percent put the decision in the hands of the election superintendent, and she opted not to recount the votes.

Lewandowski said she discussed the matter with Ann Hicks at the Secretary of State’s office and gave her the numbers. Hicks told the superintendent that Lipsey could be declared the winner, and Lewandowski attributed the five missing votes to machine error.

She said the only way to find the error would be to count the ballots by hand.

In addition to the five unaccounted for votes, four ballots were rejected by Lewandowski. Three of the ballots were because of failure to produce photo identification and the fourth was because the signature on the envelope did not match that of the voter. According to Lewandowski, the rejected ballots are not in question and will never be counted.

The denial of the recount left Cogburn with the option of accepting the results or filing a petition to contest the results in Jones County Superior Court.