More ballot problems in Beaufort County

Absentee voters Ellen and Cliff Keith did not need instructions to cast a proper ballot for two Beaufort City Council seats up for grabs in the Nov. 4 general election.

Good thing for them, too, because they didn't receive any instructions.

The Beaufort County Voter Registration and Elections office mailed about 80 ballots that did not tell voters such as the Keiths how many candidates they could select in at-large, multi-seat races. The mistake affects mailed absentee ballots that include races for Beaufort City Council, Bluffton Town Council, Fripp Island Public Service District and Hilton Head Island Public Service District 1, according to voting office executive director Agnes Garvin.

Those races share a common characteristic -- they are at-large contests for which more than one candidate can receive a vote. For instance, there are four candidates for the two seats open on the Bluffton Town Council. Voters can vote for a maximum of two candidates. The absentee ballots didn't have instructions to explain that to voters.

The erroneous ballots were mailed Thursday and Friday, and the mistake was discovered Saturday, Garvin said. The elections staff hand-wrote instructions on ballots mailed subsequently.

"We just didn't get a good job of proofreading for 'two,' " Garvin said.

Garvin said her office will begin calling affected voters today to give them the missing information and inform them of their options:

• Accepting the ballot and using it to cast votes;

• Rejecting the ballot and mailing it back to the elections office. The office then will mail out a corrected version that must be received by Election Day to be counted.

• Coming to an elections office to reject the ballot and vote by machine.

It was not clear Monday how many incorrect ballots already have been returned or how many of those, if any, would be invalidated.

Ballots with a number of votes equal to or less than the number of seats at stake will be valid. However, if a voter selects more candidates than there are open seats, the votes for that race will be invalid, although votes in other races still will be counted, Garvin said.

Ellen Keith said she knew the appropriate number of council seats up for grabs but was concerned others might not.

"It's something people really care about, and I'd hate for people's votes to not count," she said.

Thirty-six ballots with missing information were mailed to Beaufort voters, 10 to Bluffton voters, 32 to Hilton Head Island voters and one to a voter on Fripp Island, Garvin said.

The ballot inaccuracies are the second snag with early voting Beaufort County has encountered this month. Earlier, absentee voting by machine was delayed two days because the Beaufort office had a problem with a password necessary to upload ballots to the S.C. State Election Commission for review.