Roane County election officials were forced to recount every ballot in Thursday’s election due to around 1,300 early votes that were mistakenly left out of the count. The recount ended up changing the results in one race.

Roane County Election Administrator Charles Haliway said the problem was a ballot card had been mistakenly left in a voting unit at an early voting location in Harriman. Officials said the seal had not been broken and the vote tally had not been altered.

The mistake was discovered when a county commissioner noticed the numbers didn’t add up. The recount was a very transparent process.

Candidates and the media were invited to watch election officials recount each and every vote. The recount ended up changing the results in one race. Sarah Stewart had been declared the new circuit court clerk with a less than 200 vote lead over her opponent, incumbent Ann Goldston, from Harriman.

The recount showed Goldston won by 340 votes.

“Right now I don’t feel an anger because, you know, my emotions are so high. I’m just glad someone caught it because I personally wouldn’t have.Would you have questioned it? No. No, last night was last night to me. I probably would have never looked at those numbers one time,” said Goldston.

The Roane County Election Commission says this was a human error that’s never happened before, but they are planning changes.

“We’re going to change our procedure on how we account for early voting cards. We use four remote sites as well as the absentee county machine. Earlier all of this was written into one tabulation, but we’re going to change it where each card is accounted for as it’s read,” said Haliway.

State election officials say election results are not official until certified by the state election commission.