Dorchester County can’t count absentee ballots due to printing error, results delayed
A printing error that affected some 14,600 absentee ballots in Dorchester County will prevent election officials from tabulating those votes Tuesday night and may delay close statewide races from being called on election night.
Dorchester County elections director Todd Billman said that after beginning to open absentee ballots Tuesday morning, officials discovered they could not be read by ballot scanning machines.
“After looking at every option to see if there was any issue with our equipment, we noticed that there was a printing error on all of the ballots,” he said at an evening press conference. “And what that printing error caused is no ballot to be able to be read through.”
Billman said the error would not prevent all votes from being counted, but could delay the process until Friday morning, when votes must be certified.
South Carolina Election Commission spokesman Chris Whitmire reiterated that all ballots would be counted and that the delay in counting them would not impact the integrity of the election, even if it meant the unofficial results of mail-in ballots would not be available Tuesday night.
“It is too early to know when the results will be tabulated, but the SEC is working with elections officials in Dorchester County to count the ballots accurately and completely,” he said.
Whitmire said the issue impacts only the by-mail ballots issued by Dorchester County.
If Dorchester County’s votes cannot be counted until Friday, it may prevent races separated by fewer than 14,600 votes from being called.
Mara Mellstrom, the campaign manager for Republican congressional candidate Nancy Mace, said the campaign knew of the issue. Mace is facing off with incumbent U.S. Rep. Joe Cunningham in SC’s 1st Congressional District.
“We are aware of the situation and look forward to the quickest possible solution that ensures all ballots are counted,” she said.
Cunningham campaign spokeswoman Rebecca Drago said her camp didn’t believe the outstanding Dorchester vote would preclude an election night decision in the race.
“Dorchester County is split between the 1st and 6th Congressional districts, so we know that not all of these ballots impact our race,” she said. “Our numbers show that Joe has a clear advantage with ballots cast by mail.”
Billman said the county was currently looking into a couple solutions to rectify the problem and had reached out to the state Election Commission for guidance.
One of the solutions would involve getting a vendor to reprint the marks on the absentee ballots so they’re thick enough for the machines to read them. The other plan involves a manual counting process.
“We want everyone to know that this will be an open process. We’ll keep you guys notified along the whole way of how we’re doing,” Billman said. “I’m very thankful that we have a lot of workers here ready to make sure that your vote counts and that your vote is counted accurately.”
He said the printing error affected the approximately 14,600 absentee ballots that were mailed to voters. As of Monday night, 13,500 of those ballots had been returned and another 1,100 were outstanding, but could still be returned until polls close at 7 p.m.
A county record 41% of registered Dorchester voters cast absentee ballots prior to Election Day, Billman said.
Reporter Caitlin Byrd contributed
This story was originally published November 3, 2020 at 7:15 PM with the headline "Dorchester County can’t count absentee ballots due to printing error, results delayed."