Slow pace of Beaufort County primary election results causes anxious moments. Here’s why
Primary election results for Beaufort County were delayed for hours due to a system error that affected six precincts, the South Carolina Election Commission said Tuesday night.
In an interview with The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette, county Board of Voter Registration and Elections Chairman Jean Felix said some voters’ ballots were not changed to their new districts following redistricting after the 2020 Census.
The error led to some being issued ballots without the correct candidates for their district on them, Felix said. The mix-up mostly affected voters in Hilton Head, Sun City, and Bluffton. County Council District 6 was most impacted.
Although partial numbers were released about 10:30 p.m. ET, all but two precincts were available about 1 a.m.
District 6 had 2,564 ballots cast, and Felix said about 70 incorrect ballots were submitted before the error was caught during early voting. South Carolina law prohibits voters from casting a second ballot, even in the case of a county error, but Felix said all voters affected by the mix-up who had not voted were issued correct ballots Tuesday.
The county created two different data sets of votes to correct the problem, and Felix said the two sets of ballots have to be merged together by hand. Felix also said vote counters started sometime after polls closed at 7 p.m. and have not stopped working since.
The error was first reported by Mike Covert, who was running in the District 6 County Council primary. Covert was issued an incorrect ballot, and along with fellow District 9 primary candidate Shellie West Hodges, sued the county election board and South Carolina State Election Commission on Friday.
Covert and Hodges, both Republicans, sought a temporary restraining order and injunction to postpone the election until all voters received the correct ballots. No hearing was held before Tuesday’s election.
There are still votes left to be counted. Results were reported early Wednesday in 96 of 98 county precincts. The final two precincts hold all “fail-safe” votes — ballots where voters moved but didn’t update their addresses, and provisional ballots that were cast and will be counted at the county canvassing meeting Thursday morning.
Felix said she did not know how many ballots remained in the last two precincts.
The delay in results caused confusion for some of the candidates waiting to see if they had won.
Tommy Reitz defeated incumbent District 11 Councilmen Stu Rodman by over 30 percentage points, but he and his election party didn’t know he won for six hours. Reitz, who has never held public office before, and 40 supporters gathered at Giuseppi’s pizza restaurant awaiting for results to come in.
Most of the party stayed until 10:30 p.m. and the delay in results did cause a bit of tension, but the outcome was “wonderful,” he said.
“As things dragged on, we got a little I don’t want to say concerned, but questioning what was going on,” Reitz said.
Other candidates ended their election parties before the results came in. Sheriff P.J.Tanner won his hotly contested primary race against challenger “JoJo” Woodward Jr. by nearly six thousand votes. But Tanner, whose election party started at 7 p.m. and was supposed to end at 10 p.m., went home without knowing for sure who won.
Tanner said he expected results to be released sooner than they were, although early voting was also affected by the redistricting error.
“The early voting and absentee, I think those are counted first because they had all day to count those and you’d think those would be the first things out,” Tanner said “Here it is, 9:45, I haven’t seen those numbers.”
This year’s primary saw 21.8% of eligible voters head to the polls — an increase in turnout from the 2020 primary.
Felix said she was not surprised by the increase in turnout because both the Democrats and Republicans held their primary at the same time. In 2020 the primaries were split.
Island Packet Reporter Sofia Sanchez contributed to this story
This story was originally published June 15, 2022 at 1:26 PM.
