Carroll County Elections Supervisor Patti Brown-Traylor said Friday she will order a recount in the Temple mayoral race that was decided by three votes.

Brown-Traylor said Georgia Election Law O.C.G.A. 21-2-495 and State Election Board Rule 183-1-12-.02 give her the authority to call for a recount when the difference between the two candidates is less than one percent. Tuesday’s final election results showed Mayor Rick Ford defeated Lester Harmon by three votes — 304-301, including a provisional ballot that was added later to Tuesday’s tally.

The voting results were certified Friday.

Harmon would have had two business days after the results were certified to request a recount, but Brown-Traylor decided to go ahead and move forward with the process after Harmon had indicated he would do so.

“Rather than wait for them to fi le for a recount next week, I went ahead and sent out the letters informing everyone of a recount, Brown-Traylor said. “The law gives me that authority.”

Harmon said he and his supporters had called the Board of Elections office several times since Tuesday and already had the paperwork ready to file requesting a recount. Once the election was certified Friday, he said he went to Carrollton to file his paperwork for the recount but was informed by Brown-Traylor she had already done so.

The recount will be held in Carrollton at the Carroll County Elections and Registration office, 423 College St., lower level lobby, at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 10. All candidates have a right to attend or to send a representative to the recount. The public and any interested parties are also allowed to attend.

“At this point I really have no comment,” Ford said. “I’m just going to let the election process take its course, wherever that may take us.”

Harmon, who served one term as mayor before being defeated by Ford four years ago, was ahead in the race by 20 votes Tuesday night before early voting and absentee ballots were tallied and Ford came out on top.

Brown-Traylor said the recount will consist of running the computer memory cards back through the machine for ballots that were cast on Nov. 3, as well as the memory cards for those absentee and early voting ballots that were cast in the Board of Elections office. While the computer memory cards will likely spit out the same totals as they did on election night, it’s possible a discrepancy may be found in the 29 paper absentee ballots that were mailed to the office.

“That’s the only real area where that could be a possibility,” Brown-Traylor said. “Sometimes with the old scanners if you ran them through at the wrong angle or something they might pick it up or not, or if the mark is faint it might pick it up or it might not pick it up.”

Brown-Traylor added that because there are so few paper ballots they could be counted by hand rather than run back through the scanning machine, if necessary.

If the recount doesn’t change the results of the election, Brown-Traylor said Harmon’s only other recourse would be to contest the election in Carroll County Superior Court. Harmon said Friday he and his supporters are already working to find grounds for a challenge and he will pursue all available legal avenues.

“There’s already stuff we’re going over this week,” he said. “There’s so many people coming up to me telling me that I owe it to the people of Temple to challenge this to be sure that the election goes the way the people say and that nobody is able to steal the election. I plan to pursue every avenue the law says that I have. They have not convinced me that I have not won.”