The South Carolina Election Commission may think Glora Bromell Tinubu avoided a runoff with Preston Brittain, but the state’s Democratic Party isn’t so sure and they may take legal action to correct what they say is a mistake. According to results from the election commission, Tinubu secured 52 percent of the vote in Tuesday night’s primary contest against the 32 year old Horry County attorney, who was well behind her with 39 percent; however, state Rep. Ted Vick still appeared on ballots across the state even though he dropped out of the race at the end of May following his arrest in Columbia and still garnered over 2,300 voters — 8 percent — but instead of counting those ballots the commission simply discarded them. With Vick’s votes included, Tinubu only had 49 percent of the vote to Brittain’s 36, which would trigger a runoff between the two on June 26.
South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman, Dick Harpootlian expressed concern in a release Wednesday that simply discarding the votes for the Chesterfield County state representative was not appropriate, calling for those votes to be included in the total and for the commission to proceed with a runoff in two weeks. “The South Carolina Democratic Party cares about the voters in South Carolina and we care about their right to vote,” Harpootlian said in the release.
Harpootlian cited South Carolina code of law 7-17-610, which states “…there are more persons seeking nomination than there are offices, the majority shall be ascertained by dividing the total vote cast for all candidates by the number of positions to be filled, and by dividing the result by two.”
Full Article: SC Democrats call for runoff between Tinubu, Brittain in 7th Congressional | SCNOW.