Wrong ballots were sent to Horry voters. Republicans reject a call for new county election.

Horry County Republicans on Thursday tossed a complaint by defeated County Council chairman candidate Mark Lazarus over the integrity of a June 28 runoff election he lost, saying his appeal wasn’t filed within a time frame allowed by a 1962 state law.

Lazarus, who lost the contest by 240 votes to incumbent Johnny Gardner, said a glitch that sent 1,377 Republican voters Democratic ballots may have shifted the outcome of the race.

“It’s a shame that the 1,377 disenfranchised voters weren’t able to be represented today,” Lazarus told The Sun News shortly after the county GOP’s executive committee voted 40-5 to dismiss his appeal.

Gardner, who first beat Lazarus in 2018 for the council’s top seat, took 50.6 percent of the June 28 vote to Lazarus’s 49.4 percent, enough to avoid an automatic recount. In 2018, Gardner edged out Lazarus by 111 votes.

Days before the late June contest, 1,377 GOP voters got ballots meant for Democrats, an error county election officials blamed on the “printing and mailing process” from West Columbia-based Sun Solutions.

“The election was solid. There was nothing wrong with the election,” Gardner told The Sun News Thursday. “The ballots were clear, everyone understood what they were doing. To go the other way would be nothing but pure speculation.”

Lazarus initially went to the county’s voter registration board with his concerns a day after the result, but was denied.

The next step for him was an appeal directly to the Horry County GOP. Under an obscure state law penned 60 years ago, protests for elections of county officers need to be submitted to party chairs “not later than noon Monday” after a race is certified.

For Lazarus, that would have meant July 4. But Jarrett Bouchette, Gardner’s attorney, said the statute makes no exception for holidays.

Horry County GOP leader Roger Slagle told the committee Thursday he didn’t receive a copy of Lazarus’s complaint until July 5.

Nick Katsanos, a member of the county’s executive committee, said ignoring the state law would violate his party’s platform.

“I’m kind of perplexed how we can take the vote away from the people,” he said from Journey Church in Murrell’s Inlet, where Thursday’s meeting took place. “Mr. Gardner followed the rules, he won. We are a nation of laws, we are Republicans, and as Republicans we believe in the rule of law.”

This story was originally published July 7, 2022 at 12:00 AM.