Richland County election officials misplaced 70 ballots after Democratic primary
Richland County’s Election and Voter Registration Board, which has been mired in controversy since losing more than 1,000 votes in the 2018 election, said Monday that it initially misplaced about 70 absentee ballots Saturday during the Democratic presidential primary.
Interim elections director Terry Graham said the commission first realized the ballots were missing Saturday night after the machine that counts ballots showed some missing.
On Sunday, elections workers returned to the office to scour for the 70 missing ballots, but were unable to locate them, Graham said. And by Monday, when Richland County workers counted the ballots with the help of employees from the S.C. Elections Commission, the 70 ballots were found. The news was first reported by the Post and Courier.
“I really think it was in an envelope and someone is scared to say, ‘Hey, it was in the envelope,” Graham told The State. “I don’t think it was the machine.”
State Elections Commission spokesman Chris Whitmire told The State that Richland County officials said they believed the ballots stuck together when the ballots went through the machine, which is “not common.”
Whitmire said local officials told them that some ballots had sticky notes on them, which may have contributed to them sticking together.
Richland County officials updated their unofficial election results about 9:50 a.m. Monday, Whitmire said.
“Our understanding today is they’ve rescanned all the absentee ballots and they tell us their numbers balance now,” said Whitmire, who called the missing ballots “concerning.”
“Sometimes, you can have one or two off and you can find an explain for that, but 70 certainly is a number that’s concerning,” Whitmire said. “We’ll be following up with Richland to kind of get a final word on it, but this is what we’re hearing today (Monday).”
The Richland County elections board has ran into problems in the past, leading to the ouster of the entire board last year. Election officials had acknowledged they failed to count 1,040 ballots — roughly 1% of total votes cast — cast in the 2018 midterms. Once the mistake was realized, the board’s former director Rokey Suleman resigned.
Last year, election officials detailed a plan to combat lost ballots in the future, including adding more staff in polling places. In June, state lawmakers voted to hire a consultant to study what went wrong in 2018. State Election Commission staff also said they were working with Richland County counterparts to conduct more training.
Graham said the commission has had issues with counting absentee ballots before.
“Things in our absentee department need to change,” Graham said. “I just feel bad for something I promised the voters of Richland County. I just feel like I didn’t deliver.”
Graham added, “It doesn’t look good for us now.”
This story was originally published March 2, 2020 at 4:41 PM.
