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Dozens of voters in a South Carolina county submitted the wrong ballots after records were not updated to reflect newly drawn district boundaries, leading some candidates to be left off the list of choices in their county races.
A total of 70 voters in Beaufort County were given ballots with the wrong county council races listed, according to the State Election Commission. Although the problem was identified and corrected for other voters before the primary election Tuesday, the 70 ballots that were already cast “will be counted as normal,” election officials told local news outlet WJCL.
TRUMP-ENDORSED ARRINGTONTESTS SOUTH CAROLINA REDISTRICTING IN GOP PRIMARY
“A review by the SEC indicates that the Beaufort County Voter Registration and Elections Office identified the voters that needed to be moved into new county council districts once the new plan was approved earlier this year,” the commission said in a statement. “However, the final action was not taken by the office to implement the change in the statewide voter registration system.”
The error only affected candidates running in the GOP primary for Beaufort County Council in the 6th, 8th, and 10th districts, officials said.
One candidate, Mike Covert, running in the 6th District, filed a lawsuit in response to the error that calls on the county to redo the election. Covert had first noticed the problem last week when his and his wife’s ballots didn’t list his name, nor did it list opponent Tab Tabernik, when he went to vote early Wednesday.
“Having been in this for a while, the excitement was there to cast a ballot and [vote for] myself … and then I did a double take,” Covert told the outlet.
State election officials argued there was nothing they could do for the ballots that were already cast, prompting Covert to accuse the county of suppressing the vote.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“Come to find out that my address and … several other dozen people hadn’t been converted from the old district into the new,” he said. “Because of what they did, their incompetence, whether it’s local level or state level or all the above, it took away my constitutional right as well as … the constitutional rights of others and suppressed the vote.”
Officials with the county elections board have not responded to a request for comment by the Washington Examiner.
