Everything matches: Beaufort County election results are certified after retabulation

After a retabulation of all ballots cast in the primary, the Beaufort County Board of Voter Registration and Elections on Friday found a 100% match with the results it got Tuesday and subsequently certified the election.

The retabulation was ordered by The South Carolina Election Commission, citing in particular “concerns” over the votes cast in the county in the U.S. District 1 race on the Republican ticket. Incumbent U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace defeated challenger former state Rep. Katie Arrington with Mace getting 53% of the vote.

Each voting location’s ballots were scanned, one by one, and the results were compared to Tuesday’s totals.

“Every single one of them matched,” said Jean Felix, head of the Beaufort County Election Board.

The difference between a retabulation and a recount is that recounts are for specific races that end with small margins of victory while retabluations are for every race voted on in the election.

“I’m glad that we were able to successfully certify this election,” said Felix.

However, there will be two statewide runoff elections. One for the Republican primary for Superintendent of Education and one for the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate. Those runoffs will be held June 28.

Those who voted Tuesday can only participate in the runoff for the party they voted in originally. Anyone who didn’t vote Tuesday can vote in either runoff.

During the early voting period, some County Council candidates’ names were not on the ballot for the district they were running in. According to Felix, this issue was caused by a redistricting error where voters were not updated to be living in their new districts.

Due to the redistricting error, there were two databases. One, called the old database that encompassed all of the precincts and locations in Beaufort County. The other, the new database, was only the 16 precincts affected by the redistricting error.

“You couldn’t take the electronic results and just upload them like you once upon a time could because we have these two independent databases,” Felix said.

It wasn’t until the databases were merged that a report could be uploaded for real time results.

The candidates affected were Mike Covert and Tab Tabernik who ran for District 6, and Shellie West Hodges and Mark Lawson who ran for District 9. Covert and Hodges filed for a temporary injunction to Tuesday’s election in their districts, but were not granted that request.



The issue was fixed and only about 70 ballots were affected, according to Marie Smalls, e director of the Beaufort County Board of Voter Registration.



However, any ballot cast during early voting could not be recast regardless of missing candidates, election officials said.

This story was originally published June 17, 2022 at 4:47 PM.