Horry County primary ballot glitch called accidental but ‘unacceptable’

A glitch that led to 1,300 Republican absentee voters receiving erroneous ballots just days ahead of an Horry County Council chairman runoff race was the result of an “extremely rare but unfortunate” processing error, a state probe concluded.

Mark Lazarus, who ran the County Council from 2013 through 2018, lost a June 28 runoff to council chairman Johnny Gardner by 240 votes.

But he questioned those results because 1,377 Republicans voters got Democratic absentee ballots ahead of Election Day.

County election officials blamed the error on the “printing and mailing process” from Sun Solutions, a West Columbia-based printer responsible for producing them.

Lazarus eventually conceded, but his concerns prompted the Horry County GOP to request a formal investigation by the state Election Commission and S.C. Law Enforcement Division into how the mishap occurred.

The county council formally asked for the probe on Sept. 6. Officials got the findings back on Oct. 7.

“While the data provided to Sun Solutions by Horry County was correct, an error occurred when Sun Solutions processed Horry County’s data file that caused all voters who requested an absentee ballot to receive a Democrat Party ballot,” the investigation found. “It appears the error occurred only while Horry County’s data was being processed.”

County officials also wanted to know whether Sun Solutions had any direct ties to local “individuals, organizations or firms.”

S.C. Election Commission investigators couldn’t verify any such relations but added “it is certainly possible Sun Solutions has business clients in Horry County other than the Horry County Board of Voter Registration and Elections.”

Sun Solutions is one of three state-approved vendors for absentee mailing services - added in August 2020 to help ease the strain of mail-in voting that built during the pandemic.

S.C. Election Commission chief Howard Knapp called the Horry County mistake “unacceptable,” and contributed some voters from getting ballots on time.

But a bigger problem, he said, was just a two-week window between the June 14 primary and June 28 runoff.

“For ballots to be guaranteed to be delivered at least seven days prior to the runoff, ballots would have to be mailed on Friday, the week of the primary,” Knapp wrote.

“This is impossible as the election is not made official until late Friday afternoon. For voters to receive runoff absentee ballots earlier, state law would have to be amended to allow more time between primaries and runoffs, which is a matter purely at the discretion of the S.C. General Assembly.”