What went wrong in Richland election? Answers sought after long lines, wrong ballots
From extraordinarily long lines to confusion about voting locations to incorrect ballots missing key races, Richland County’s primary election was marred by myriad problems, causing local leaders to question what went so wrong and what needs to change to prevent the same problems in November’s general election.
The S.C. State Election Commission said it was “disappointed” by Tuesday’s mistakes in Richland County and that it would be “stepping up its involvement” with the county before the June 23 primary runoff election. Meanwhile, local lawmakers shook their heads and called for improvements.
“What did Yogi Berra say? ‘It’s deja vu all over again.’ Absolutely. I have massive concerns for November,” said state Rep. Kirkman Finlay, R-Richland, who is among the lawmakers who appoint members of the local elections commission.
“Look,” he said, “there are 45 counties that I think ran elections that worked last night in the state. There is no reason that Richland County shouldn’t be able to run an election. We’re the outlier, not the average. I think we need to have a very calm and quiet assessment, perhaps by outside professionals, as to why we failed.”
After a night when some voters waited as late as midnight to cast ballots, Tuesday’s issues were reminiscent of the disastrous 2012 presidential election in the county, which remains fresh in the minds of many residents.
That year, a shortage of properly functioning voting machines led to hours-long wait times and some people abandoning lines and foregoing their right to vote. Multiple lawsuits were filed against the county in the wake of the 2012 election, the county elections director was demoted, and the elections commission was overhauled.
The 2012 election fiasco set into motion the past seven years of revolving leadership, continued dysfunction in operations and multiple election day mishaps. Richland County has had at least seven elections directors since 2012, and negotiations recently fell apart with the latest candidate to take over the position full-time.
“We seem to be stuck circa 2012 in elections,” Finlay said. “We never fail to fail, easiest thing to do. ... I think we need to acknowledge that we have got systemic issues and problems. We need to move quickly.”
He said the county legislative delegation needs to meet and fill an opening on the county election commission. “And we need to try to move because I don’t believe we’re going to have more workers in the fall. I think we’re going to have more voters.”
Another Richland County lawmaker said what happened Tuesday should push state leaders to expand absentee voting before November.
“We need to have a sensible approach to voting,” said state Rep. Wendy Brawley, D-Richland. “We’re going to have the same problem, if not more so, if we don’t pass legislation that will expand absentee voting” for November’s election.
Richland County’s interim elections director, Terry Graham, said he was not available for an interview Wednesday in between meetings and preparing for the certification of the county’s votes. Election commission chairman Charles Austin did not respond to a request for comment.
One member of the county’s election commission, a computer scientist who has studied election issues, acknowledged numerous mistakes that need to be addressed.
“We do have problems in Richland that we need to solve that are unique to Richland, and we need to work on this,” commissioner Duncan Buell said.
Immediately, he said, county leaders must address the severe shortage of poll workers and poll clerks, who oversee each voting site. And, Buell added, the election commission must move quickly to hire a permanent director, which he said it hopes to do by July 1.
Not enough poll workers
Tuesday’s problems in Richland County appeared to largely be a result of too few people being willing to staff the polls in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Hundreds of regular poll workers refused to work this election because of health concerns. Others who were expected to work Tuesday simply didn’t show up, multiple poll workers said.
The lack of poll workers caused county officials to combine numerous voting sites, with as many as five precincts combined at some locations.
The combined voting sites led to confusion for some voters who showed up to their traditional polling location only to be redirected to another site. Voters were supposed to be notified by postcards of their new voting site; many were, but others said they received no notice. Some voters reported waiting in long lines only to reach the front and discover they were in the wrong location.
Some of the combined polling places had far too many registered voters, Buell said.
For instance, at Spring Valley High School, where some people waited three hours or more to vote and stayed in line as late as midnight, nearly 13,000 registered voters had been assigned to one location. Under normal circumstances, no Richland County voting location hosts more than 4,400 registered voters, Buell said.
“We need to look a lot harder at how to combine precincts. We need to be ready in advance,” he said.
Jason McLees was the poll clerk for Bridge Creek Elementary School in Elgin, a job he took on after the 2012 election “so that we wouldn’t see what we saw yesterday.”
He said the precinct, which was combined with two other polling places, was not prepared for the influx of people it saw on Tuesday. Of 13 people signed up to work the precinct, four called out two days before and another two or three failed to show up Tuesday.
McLees said Richland County needs to do a better job recruiting younger people to work as poll workers and provide better leadership and training for poll workers.
“The leadership of Richland County at all levels has failed us for the better part of a decade, and they continue to fail us for whatever reason,” McLees said. “We keep repeating the same mistakes.”
Races missing from ballots
There were multiple reports of voters receiving ballots that did not include races they believed they should have been voting in, including the House District 80, House District 75 and County Council District 8 races.
Ballot issues at one precinct led the poll manager, Rusty DePass — who has a history of suing Richland County over elections and other issues — to hand-write ballots for some voters without consulting county election officials. DePass said Tuesday he did not consult election officials because “they’re so incompetent.”
DePass said Wednesday that the combined precinct lacked ballots that listed the correct races and had some machines that failed to load some ballots. In addition to offering handwritten replacement ballots to voters, he said that by the end of the day poll workers could only load one ballot on a single machine.
Rhodes Bailey, who won a race against Heather Bauer to become the Democratic nominee for House District 75, said Tuesday’s ballot issues were “shocking” and “infuriating.”
“We received quite a few phone calls from people that they intended to vote for us and that my name wasn’t on the ballot,” Bailey said. “One person said my name was on my ballot and I’m not in your district. The margin of victory was large enough that it didn’t impact our race. But that doesn’t mean that a lot of people were not disenfranchised.”
Bauer echoed Bailey in saying she believed some voters, particularly minorities in the district, were disenfranchised by the confusion.
Party, state leaders respond
House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford, D-Richland, spent the night delivering food to people waiting in long lines to vote. What he saw of the election “would be best described as a dumpster fire,” he said.
Rutherford said after the board was fired in 2019, it left the elections office with little institutional knowledge, something that has caused trouble in several recent elections. He also criticized Richland County Council for not providing enough funding to the elections office. And on top of all of that, he decried the fact that the office has been without a permanent director for more than a year.
State Sen. Darrell Jackson, D-Richland, 27-year veteran lawmaker from Lower Richland, agreed on that point: “The first thing they (the elections board) need to do is get a director. They need to find somebody with great experience who can get things done.”
Craig Plank resigned from Richland County’s election commission over the inability to hire a new director just last month, saying he feared exactly the kind of problems seen on Tuesday.
“There’s a lack of urgency in getting a new director in place,” Plank said. “What should have taken 90 days dragged on for seven or eight months, and then we lose a talented candidate, the unanimous choice, that I thought had the personality to run that department right.”
In May, director candidate Tammy Smith walked away from the job offer after the election board would not increase the salary it offered her.
“We need to be ready to get a talented director, and not get hung up on small differences in income,” Plank said, referring to the salary dispute that ultimately derailed negotiations for the job. “You’ve got to be able to look beyond the tip of your nose.”
State Sen. Dick Harpootlian, D-Richland, said legislative delegation members had been assured by the Richland County elections board that everything was ready for Tuesday’s primaries.
“The delegation appoints the commission, and it’s up to the commission to hire the right people who make sure the election goes correctly,” Harpootlian said. “We will be looking into that.”
State Republican and Democratic party leaders joined lawmakers in their disappointment over Richland County’s election problems.
“We think the biggest thing is to get people that know what they’re doing, poll workers that are in there that are properly trained and know the right districts,” S.C. Republican Party spokeswoman Claire Robinson said. “Richland County isn’t the only big county in South Carolina, … and (other counties) are not having problems.”
Trav Robertson, chairman of the S.C. Democratic Party, said state lawmakers, particularly the Richland County delegation, are responsible for addressing the kinds of problems seen Tuesday, and they can’t wait until November to take action.
“We’re going to go to court if the Legislature does not fix this issue,” Robertson said. “The problem is, you don’t want to be critical of civil servants and the people putting on our elections. But, the Legislature has got to pull their heads out of their ass, the Richland County delegation, the infighting that led to this point is going to cost us statewide in November.”
This story was originally published June 10, 2020 at 12:58 PM.
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