Horry County Republican party certifies election results despite candidate challenges
Horry County’s statewide primary results stand after two hours of shouting, disagreement over procedure and intense questioning from executive members of the Horry County Republican Party Executive committee.
Candidates Jeremy Halpin and Angie Altman-Robbins appealed their respective primary results over concerns of irregularities in the election. Karon Mitchell withdrew her challenge on Thursday.
Forty-four executive committee members heard the complaints in a Horry County Courtroom during an informal legal proceeding. Members decided there was not enough evidence to reverse the election results certification for either race from the June 9 Statewide Primaries.
Both appeals were denied.
The purpose of the meeting was to determine if there was enough proof to challenge the vote certification that happened last week. Disagreements abounded over what evidence could be used or was relevant, when questions could be used and why the meeting needed to last as long as it did.
The primary elections, held on June 9, did have issues with voters getting the wrong ballots, which officials from both the Horry County and South Carolina election departments confirmed happened to some voters.
An exact number of how many voters got the wrong ballots is not known. Horry County Elections Director Sandy Martin said she believes the problem was addressed early on during the day. She thanked the poll workers who volunteered with applause from the committee members.
“I hate to see them when we get in here and people are downing them,” Martin said. “If one person says they got the wrong ballot, everyone says they got wrong, especially on Facebook.”
None of the races were all that close and were decided by hundreds of votes, so it would take a significant problem to potentially flip a race. But the candidates who challenged said they mostly did so to make sure the election was fair and every vote counted.
Attorney Reese Boyd said the United States Supreme Court states that the question was never if the election was perfect. He said the decision had to be made on if there was or was not evidence that the supported an incorrect outcome.
“The election doesn’t have to be perfect,” Boyd said. “There has to be sufficient evidence that the outcome reported from the election was not correct.”
Clerk of Court challenge
Challenger Altman-Robbins, running for the clerk of court, representing herself, believed there were issues with the voting machines getting jammed and absentee ballots not being tallied properly.
“I’m here to protest that election because of the problems in the voting system,” Altman-Robbins said. “If one vote has been counted incorrectly, that’s one vote too many.”
Martin did not know of any reason the clerk of court’s results would be in doubt. The clerk of court race was a county-wide race, so there shouldn’t have been an issue with people getting the wrong ballot.
Her opponent, Incumbent Renee Elvis, also representing herself, said every vote does count, and that the vote totals were so wide that even if there was a problem, there wouldn’t be enough evidence to say the certified results were wrong. She felt approving a challenge of the race would undermine the will of the people who overwhelmingly supported her.
She noted she wasn’t notified of the protest until after the deadline.
“I’m not sure why we are here, but we are here,” Elvis said. “I feel the election was done properly.”
District 6 challenge
Jeremy Halpin, who ran for County Council District 6, representing himself, protested the election over the process. He claimed multiple locations had voters given incorrect ballots. He blamed the coronavirus pandemic forcing some districts to combine and leading to an influx of inexperienced precinct volunteers who accidentally misinformed voters on which district they were in or gave voters wrong ballots.
“People expect a level of confidence when they go into election,” Halpin said. “The person who is to make sure you’re voting in the right location and the right district ... the person handing them that ballot is supposed to know what they’re doing.”
Halpin said letting the issues slide in this election could create bigger problems down the road, but didn’t have any signed affidavits of voters getting the wrong ballot.
“I believe the votes might be there,” Halpin said. “We don’t know until we go back and look at the machines.”
Incumbent Cam Crawford had Attorney Michael Anzelmo speak for his rebuttal. Anzelmo said the only way to delay the race is to prove that the irregularities were so great it could change the result. He argued there wasn’t any evidence to support there were enough errors to make up a more than 500 vote difference.
“The burden is heavy. It’s supposed to be heavy,”Anzelmo said.
Runoff race
The June 23 Republican runoffs will proceed as planned. The Democratic party has no runoffs in Horry County.
Since the auditor race is going into a runoff, all voters in Horry County will have the chance to vote in the runoff between R A Johnson and Beth Calhoun.
Horry County voters living in the respective district will be able to vote in a runoff for the District 9 County Council seat and the District 33 South Carolina Senate seat.
The District 9 runoff race is between Mark Causey and Terry Fowler. Neither candidates are incumbents. The District 33 runoff race is between Incumbent Luke Rankin and Challenger John Gallman.
If you voted in the June 9 primary, you must vote in the same party primary for the June 23 runoff. If you didn’t vote earlier this month, you can still cast a ballot in the Republican primary.
To avoid any problems at the polls, check your sample ballot and precinct before heading out to vote. It can be found on SCvotes.org and will contain information about who you can vote for and where to go.
