South Carolina: The Great Richland County Election Debacle of 2012 | Free Times

There’s a saying: If you don’t like the weather in South Carolina, wait five minutes. This year, that might also be said for election results. The Great Richland County Election Debacle of 2012 is already being described in monumental terms. In news stories, The State has called it “perhaps the mother of all bungled county elections in modern S.C. history.” State Democratic Party Chairman Dick Harpootlian summed it up in fewer words. “It’s f#!ked up,” he said. Richland County Democratic Rep. Mia Butler characterized it even more succinctly. “Inexcusable,” she called the county’s election process in an open letter to media and her constituents.

South Carolina: Lawmaker apologizes for Richland County election mess | TheState.com

A state lawmaker from Richland County has issued a public apology for the bungled Richland County elections Nov. 6, calling them a “colossal failure” that caused hundreds if not thousands of people “to drop out of long voting lines.” The statement by Rep. Mia Butler Garrick, D-Richland, made last week in a blast email to friends and supporters, was the first apology by an elected state official to date about the election missteps marked by severe shortages and multiple breakdowns of voting machines. Never in memory have Richland County elections been so trouble-plagued, local politicians have said.

South Carolina: Counting of Paper Ballots Complete in Richland County | wltx.com

The Richland County Election Commission has completed their counting of remaining absentee ballots in Richland County. The group finished the hand count of all paper ballots around 7 p.m. Thursday. The final tabulation came around 8:30 p.m. The result? No change in the outcomes of races, although the final numbers did change by a few votes. For example, in House District 75, numbers Wednesday showed Kirkman Finlay with 7,207 votes and Joe McCulloch with 6,891. On Thursday, those statistics were Finlay 7,218 and McCulloch 6,906.

South Carolina: Richland County election certified | TheState.com

The Richland County Election Commission formally signed and certified the results of the 2012 election Friday afternoon. The commission finished the polling process just after 4 p.m. Friday. The county was supposed to have certified its results at 12 p.m., but requested two two-hour extensions. The Supreme Court granted those requests Friday afternoon, giving the county until noon Monday to certify results, but county officials said they wouldn’t need the entire extension. “I want to get this done, the state election commission wants to get this done and the public is ready for this chapter to be ended,” county election commission attorney Steve Hamm said.

South Carolina: Richland County to resume vote count | SFGate

Richland County Council will resume counting votes after the South Carolina Supreme Court cleared the way. The Richland County Election Commission planned to resume the count of last week’s results Wednesday afternoon. The justices gave county officials until noon Friday to certify the results to the State Election Commission. The justices said any disputes must be filed by Nov. 21.

South Carolina: Richland County vote: Finlay, Dixon, Penny Tax appear winners in count | TheState.com

In a count delayed a week, Kirkman Finlay appeared to prevail over Joe McCulloch, 7,207 to 6,891 in House District 75, in one of tightest and most closely watched races in Richland County’s botched Nov. 6 election, according to preliminary results from Wednesday’s tally. Finlay, a Republican, had 6,771 votes, and McCulloch, a Democrat, had 6,506 in the original count. Totals came just after 11 p.m. Wednesday – eight days after the election marked by huge outcries from voters and candidates alike and a tumultuous legal back-and-forth that led courts to interrupt Richland County’s vote before the count was complete last week.

South Carolina: High court orders Richland County ballots returned | AP

South Carolina’s Supreme Court has ordered state police to return ballots and voting machines to Richland County officials so that they can be tallied, ruling on Tuesday that a lower court didn’t have jurisdiction to order a recount. The justices also gave county officials until noon Friday to canvass the votes and give the results to state authorities, who will certify them later that day. Any disputes with election results must be filed by Nov. 21.

South Carolina: Richland County vote count resumes today | TheState.com

Richland County voters could learn as early as this afternoon what the county’s official results are in the Nov. 6 county elections. Votes will be tallied beginning at 1 p.m. on the fourth floor of the county administration building on Harden Street, Election Commission chairwoman Liz Crum said Tuesday evening. “We will get this done, and we will get it done right,” Crum said. Election observers and news media can observe county officials do the count. “Everybody on hand can watch the canvassing,” she said. “We never finished counting the vote – this is not a recount.”

South Carolina: Losing candidate calls for new election over voting machine shortage | The Augusta Chronicle

A Republican who lost a bid to unseat a Richland County councilman called for a new election Monday, accusing county elections officials of intentionally not putting out enough voting machines on Election Day. Michael Letts said at a news conference Monday that thousands of voters abandoned hourslong lines because there were not enough machines. Letts lost to County Councilman Jim Man­ning, 37 percent to 63 percent, but said he was also worried about a county sales tax vote. By a margin of more than 9,000 votes, Richland County voted to increase sales tax by a penny, a decision that supporters have said will mean a $1 billion windfall for the area. Letts, who opposed the increase, said fewer voting machines were sent to areas that had voted against the measure when it was first put to voters in 2010. “A law was broken, deliberately, before the polls were ever opened,” Letts said.

South Carolina: Republicans, Democrats agree: South Carolina elections a mess | SFGate

Republicans and Democrats don’t agree on much in South Carolina, but the leaders of both parties said this year’s elections were a mess. More than 200 candidates were kicked off the June primary ballot because of paperwork problems. Voters waited four hours or more to vote Tuesday in one of the state’s largest counties, and there was an unprecedented seizure of votes. The way people are elected was in the news more than the politicians themselves. “Both parties have spent more money, more time and more effort in court than we have on the political side. It’s been exasperating,” said South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Dick Harpootlian.

South Carolina: Vote-counting expert, former voting machines’ technician detail possible missteps in Richland County’s election | TheState.com

Planning Richland County’s 2012 election didn’t require rocket science, yet the ship exploded. Critics – which is pretty much everyone – say last week’s voting was an utter mess. Election Day was entwined with unmatched voter frustration, people who walked away because of long lines, vote-counting delays, lawsuits, ballot seizures, an election protest and recriminations about the motives of some county election officials. Early voters, trying to get a jump on Tuesday’s election, lined the sidewalk on Harden street at the Richland County administration building all day on Monday.

South Carolina: Richland County ballots to get unprecedented recount | TheState.com

In an unprecedented twist to an already knotted election, state elections officials today will conduct a court-ordered recount of all Richland County ballots cast Tuesday after a lawsuit in a House race prompted state investigators to seize voting records. Amid a swirl of legal action Thursday, the chairwoman of the Richland County Election Commission said she is sorry for the mess that created long waits at polling places, some stretching to seven hours and causing some voters to leave without casting a ballot. Read the restraining order petition and the order

South Carolina: Turnout heavy; some in Richland County voting as late as 9 or 10 pm | TheState.com

Voters across South Carolina turned out in droves in Tuesday’s presidential election, but many waited hours to cast ballots, and in some places, they said the wait resulted from a lack of voting machines or malfunctioning machines.
The S.C. Election Commission reported heavy turnout, with sporadic problems across the state. But the most complaints about the time it took to vote came from Richland County, said Chris Whitmire, a spokesman for the election commission. Many Richland County voters spent up to seven hours in line at precincts that they said didn’t have enough working voting machines to handle the crush of people. Voters at some Richland County precincts were still in line after polls closed at 7 p.m., some reportedly as late as 9 or 10 p.m.

South Carolina: All South Carolina voter registration machines go down, causing long lines | WYFF

Election officials say all the machines used to check voter registrations in the state of South Carolina were down for a time on Tuesday morning, causing long lines for absentee voters. Initially, Greenville County Registration and Elections Director Conway Belangia told News 4’s Nigel Robertson that the voting machines in Greenville County were down.  News 4 checked with other counties, and was told that the machines were down across the state. Robertson called the State Elections Office, and clarified that the machines that were down were the ones used to check voter registration and identification and to determine what ballot voters should be using, not voting machines.

South Carolina: New Voting Rules Won’t Stop Absentee Fraud | WSPA

When Senator Chip Campson of Charleston made his case for new rules that would curtail election fraud, he had specific examples. “I will remind you and give you an example right from this body, right from this Chamber and some of you might remember this back in 1981,” Campsen said.  “In 1981, Senator Albert Eugene Carmichael and his employee, Grady Flowers, were indicted for conspiracy, obstruction of justice and buying absentee ballots in connection with the June 8th 1980 Democratic primary in Dillon County.” But most of Sen. Campsen’s examples wouldn’t be impacted by the new rules.  That’s because tens of thousands of South Carolina voters cast absentee ballots and many of those are sent through the mail. “Once it goes out in the mail we don’t know what happens to it.  By the time it comes back to us, we have no way of knowing,” said Greenville County election supervisor Conway Belangia.

South Carolina: Court Blocks South Carolina Voter ID Law, for Now | NYTimes

A federal court on Wednesday blocked South Carolina from enforcing its new voter photo ID law in next month’s election, saying that there was not enough time to educate voters and officials about it. The ruling was the latest in a string of judicial interventions blunting a wave of Republican-led efforts to impose new restrictions on voting for the Nov. 6 election. But the court also ruled that South Carolina might put the law into effect in 2013. That permission, however, was contingent on a promise by state election officials to use an “extremely broad interpretation” of a provision that will make exceptions for voters who lack photo ID cards, allowing them to cast ballots as long as they give a reason for not having obtained one.

South Carolina: South Carolina Voter ID Blocked In 2012, Cleared For 2013 | TPM

A panel of federal judges ruled on Wednesday that South Carolina’s new voter ID does not have a discriminatory effect, but they also blocked it from going into effect in November. A Justice Department spokeswoman said DOJ was pleased that the court blocked the law from going into effect next month and noted that the law underwent “broad modifications” during the course of the trial to allow it to comply with Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson called the ruling “a major victory for South Carolina and its elections process. It affirms our voter ID law is valid and constitutional under the Voting Rights Act. The fact remains, voter ID laws do not discriminate or disenfranchise; they ensure integrity at the ballot box,” he said in a statement. The Washington, D.C.-based panel concluded that the voter ID law was “not enacted for a discriminatory purpose” and precleared the law for any election in 2013. But it blocked the state from implementing the law this year “given the short time left before the 2012 elections, and given the numerous steps necessary to properly implement the law — particularly the new ‘reasonable impediment’ provision — and ensure that the law would not have discriminatory retrogressive effects on African-American voters.”

South Carolina: South Carolina voter ID law blocked until 2013 | Reuters

A federal court ruled on Wednesday that South Carolina may not implement a photo ID law for voters until 2013, in the latest setback for a mainly Republican effort to establish identification rules in several states before the November 6 elections. South Carolina joined Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin as states with voter ID laws that have been blocked or deferred by state or federal judges. A three-judge panel in U.S. District Court in Washington said unanimously that South Carolina’s law would not discriminate against racial minorities. The U.S. Justice Department had argued the measure ran afoul of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a landmark of the civil rights movement. But the judges said there was too little time to put the law into effect this year, and added they might have blocked the law entirely if South Carolina had not pledged to give wide leeway to voters who cannot comply.

South Carolina: Voter ID debate shifts to South Carolina as campaigners challenge restrictions | guardian.co.uk

The battle over voting rights in the November presidential election now swings to South Carolina, following the decision by the Pennsylvania courts on Tuesday to delay implementation of a voter ID requirement in that state. All eyes are now on the legal tussle between the department of justice and South Carolina, where probably the last voter ID law will be decided before election day on 6 November. Last year South Carolina became one of at least 34 states to introduce strict laws that require voters to present photo identification at polling stations – one of a swathe of measures attacking voting rights that swept across the US this election cycle. South Carolina’s law was blocked, however, by the Obama administration last June.

South Carolina: Justice Department clears South Carolina’s online voter registration law | The Augusta Chronicle

South Carolina’s online voter registration law has won federal approval, allowing just a few days for people to use the easier option to sign up to vote Nov. 6. The U.S. Justice Department waited until its deadline to act on the state law signed in June. Under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, South Carolina must receive the federal agency’s approval for any election law change. The law, passed unanimously by the Legis­lature, removes several steps from the paper registration process. Sup­porters say the online option will help voters, improve the accuracy of voter rolls and save money. South Carolina is the 13th state to implement online voter registration. The system was available by Tuesday afternoon through a link on the state Election Commission Web site. People who want to vote Nov. 6 can register through Saturday. State law requires registration at least 31 days before an election.

South Carolina: Proof of fraud scarce in two voter ID cases | CBS News

In September 2004, Terrence Hines appeared to register voters in the city of Florence, S.C., at a fast pace. Paid for each completed card by the South Carolina Progressive Network, Hines submitted 1,800 registrations. But it turned out that the signatures were forged. One easy clue for election officials was that Hines had signed up Frank Willis, who was then the town’s mayor. “He wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer,” said Florence County Solicitor Ed Clements, who referred Hines’s case to state investigators. Hines pleaded guilty to voter fraud charges in 2006. His is one of only three documented cases of voter fraud convictions in South Carolina going back to 2000, according to a CBS News review of the public record and interviews with election officials.

South Carolina: Judges tough on both sides in South Carolina voter-ID case | TheState.com

Federal judges grilled attorneys Monday over South Carolina’s controversial voter-ID law, which opponents said would disenfranchise thousands of minorities but supporters said would have ample protection against discrimination at the polls. During closing arguments in a six-day federal trial over the law, the three-judge panel challenged attorneys for the state over election officials’ shifting stances on how they’d implement it, and the judges asked opposing attorneys why they’re rejecting clear efforts by those officials to soften possible harmful impact on African-American voters. The South Carolina law, which Attorney General Eric Holder blocked after its May 2011 enactment, has national implications that pit a state’s legal right to prevent electoral fraud against the federal government’s mandate under the 1965 Voting Rights Act to ensure equal access to the polls for minority Americans.

South Carolina: Closing arguments for South Carolina voter ID law | USAToday.com

South Carolina’s voter ID law doesn’t discriminate against blacks and allows minorities to cast ballots even if they don’t have proper identification, attorneys for the state told a panel of federal judges Monday.
Attorneys for the Justice Department and the League of Women Voters of South Carolina countered that the law is designed to disenfranchise tens of thousands of black state residents by making it harder for them to vote. Monday’s closing arguments followed a week-long trial that will decide if the ID law, which requires a valid government-issued ID to vote, will take effect.

South Carolina: States’ voter ID laws are underlying issue in 2012 presidential race | The Washington Post

South Carolina is in federal court arguing that its new law requiring people prove their identity at the polls won’t make voting so tough that it reduces turnout of African-Americans, Hispanics and other minorities. A federal panel is to determine whether South Carolina’s voter identification law violates the Voting Rights Act by putting heavy burdens on minorities who don’t have the identification. Last December, the Justice Department refused to allow South Carolina to require the photo IDs, saying doing so would reverse the voting gains of the states’ minorities. Closing arguments in the case — which went to trial in August and included several state officials as witnesses — were scheduled for Monday. South Carolina has said it would implement the law immediately if the three-judge panel upholds it, although a decision either way is likely to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

South Carolina: Voter ID gets judges’ scrutiny | The Associated Press

Recognizing this year’s elections are just a few weeks away, a panel of three federal judges questioned on Monday whether South Carolina should wait until 2014 to put its voter identification law into effect. The judges raised the question as an attorney for South Carolina delivered closing arguments in the trial over whether the state’s law discriminates against minorities. Last December, the Justice Department refused to “preclear” — find it complies with the Voting Rights Act — the law so it could go into effect. A decision in the case is expected in early October.

South Carolina: Laziness Not An Excuse Under South Carolina Voter ID Law | TPM

A lawyer for South Carolia said on Monday there are plenty of reasons voters would be able to sidestep the state’s voter ID law if a panel of federal judges allows it to take effect this year, but laziness is not among them. While defending the state’s voting law during closing arguments in federal court here, attorney H. Christopher Bartolomucci said voters could offer any number of reasons for showing up to the polls without a government-issued photo ID. However, he added, those who simply say they “didn’t feel like” it will be turned away. South Carolina is among the states that must have changes to their voting laws cleared by either the Justice Department or a panel of judges in D.C. under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The state wants its voter ID law to go into effect for the November election.

South Carolina: Voter ID case could close with legal fireworks | TheState.com

Closing arguments Monday about South Carolina’s voter ID law will cap an extraordinary case that already has seen charges of racism directed at the law’s author as well as federal judges’ open frustration over state officials’ changing stances on how they would enact the law. Opponents of the embattled law, which U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder blocked last year under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, will challenge the credibility of its chief author, state Rep. Allan Clemmons, R-Myrtle Beach. Lawyers for groups opposed to the voter ID law, including civil rights groups, will say Clemmons took false credit for its “reasonable impediment” clause, which allows voters to cast ballots if they have “reasonable” reasons for not having photo identification.

South Carolina: State responds to court’s voter ID ‘impediment’ questions | TPM

Want to vote in an election in South Carolina but don’t have a photo ID? Lawyers for the state say it will be as easy as explaining why and then casting your ballot. In paperwork filed on Friday in federal court, South Carolina’s lawyers defended the state’s voting laws by saying anyone without a proper photo identification would still be allowed to vote by simply explaining what “reasonable impediment” kept them from getting an ID. The filing came after a panel of judges in Washington, D.C., quizzed the attorneys last week about what South Carolina meant by the term “reasonable impediment.” In essence, the state’s attorneys said, defining the term is up to each individual voter.

South Carolina: Lawsuit could lead to another wave of 2012 primaries in South Carolina | TheState.com

A disqualified Charleston County Council candidate has asked a judge to order a new Republican primary in his district – a request that, if it succeeds, could lead to another wave of election lawsuits across the state. Brian Moody, a Republican, was disqualified along with more than 250 other candidates after the state Supreme Court ruled they did not file their financial paperwork properly. Subsequently, candidates across the state have tried, mostly in vain, to get back on the ballot. But, last week, when a state judge disqualified Paul Thurmond from a state Senate race for similar reasons, the judge ordered the GOP to hold a new primary, giving Thurmond a way back onto the ballot. The next day, Moody filed a lawsuit asking for the same thing. “It’s probably a ‘hail Mary,’ but if you’re already going to have a primary with my good friend Mr. Thurmond, why not have one for us?” Moody said.