SC town where no election candidates ran finally has a winner
In an election where nobody initially filed to run, a winner has emerged.
Gilbert Town Councilman Patrick Carson was re-elected Tuesday in an unusual runoff election after neither he nor anyone else initially filed for a fresh term on the council of the Lexington County town of less than 600 people.
Voters in Gilbert were in the unique position of voting for a second time in as many weeks after no candidates filed to run for town council in the Nov. 4 election.
Instead, 70 votes were split between various write-in candidates for two open, town-wide seats in the town of less than 600 people. Because a town ordinance requires a winning candidate to have a majority, two candidates had to face off in a runoff on Tuesday.
Carson won another term with 30 votes in unofficial returns Tuesday, or 73% of the total, topping opponent Keith Powell’s 11 votes, or 27%.
Carson and Powell went to a runoff after they finished third and fourth in voting on Nov. 4, with neither candidate winning more than 50% of the votes needed to win the remaining seat on town council.
Brian Smith managed to win the other town council seat with enough write-in votes in the first round, Lexington County Elections Director Lenice Shoemaker told The State. Samantha Rish also out polled the two runoff candidates, but declined to serve when told of her election win by the county elections’ office, Shoemaker said, leaving Carson and Powell to battle it out for the remaining seat.
After the town election earlier this month, the Lexington County Election Commission counted up all the write-in votes individually, and then identified if the people whose names ended up on the ballots were actually willing and able to serve.
Both candidates’ names were written on the ballot for the runoff.
Victory by write-in is not unusual in the small town. Gilbert Mayor John Reeder won re-election on Tuesday with 75% of the vote despite running unopposed, with the other quarter of the votes going to write-in candidates.
But the town faces a challenge to its rural identity as more housing development pushes farther west from Lexington along Highway 1, bringing more residents — and traffic headaches — to the western part of Lexington County.
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