‘Disappointed’ SC election commission to step up oversight after Richland primary
South Carolina election officials expressed disappointment and frustration with problems at Richland County polling places on Tuesday, issues that left many voters waiting in long lines for hours and faced with difficulty getting the correct ballot.
Now, the state is promising to step up its involvement and oversight of elections in the county ahead of several primary runoffs on June 23.
“We, like the voters of Richland County, continue to be frustrated,” Chris Whitmire, spokesman for the S.C. Election Commission, said in a statement on Wednesday.
Whitmire said the state would work more closely on training poll workers and assuring they are allocated to the busiest polling places, many of which seemed overwhelmed by higher than expected turnout in Tuesday’s Democratic and Republican primary elections.
State officials will also test and deploy voting equipment to ensure voters receive the right ballot and cast their votes quickly, as well as more directly oversee election day operations.
The State Election Commission also urged Richland County to hire a permanent elections director. The county elections office has been headed by seven directors in as many years and has been without a permanent director for more than a year. Richland County’s election board earlier this year agreed on hiring a new director only to see the preferred candidate walk away from negotiations over an unwilligness to negotiate on the new director’s salary.
Commissioner Duncan Buell said Wednesday that the board hopes to hire a new director by July 1.
“The lack of leadership within the office has gone on for far too long and remains an obstacle to effective and efficient elections going forward,” Whitmire said in a statement.
State Sen. Dick Harpootlian, D-Richland, said Wednesday afternoon the State Election Commission’s promises are not enough.
“They made promises after the election debacle in 2018,” Harpootlian said. “I want to see an investigation of what went wrong Tuesday in Richland County and what specifically the State Election Commission will do to fix it.”
Months after the 2018 general election, Richland County officials acknowledged that than 1,000 ballots had not been counted. They said the ballots would not have changed the results of any races.
Harpootlian said the State Election Commission can’t be allowed to just issue public pledges for reform.
“I want to see something in writing,” Harpootlian said. “The people who stood in line until after midnight Tuesday deserve an explanation, to know what went wrong.”
Harpootlian said he sent a letter to the State Election Commission Wednesday afternoon citing a specific state law that gives the commission the power to “investigate” and recommend the firing of any county elections employees who can’t measure up to the job.
“That statute requires an audit,” Harpootlian said. “That will tell us what went wrong.”
In the time of the current pandemic, Harpootlian said in his letter, the failures by the Richland County Elections Commission are a matter of life and death. “Hundreds of voters waited hours in the heat, with little or no social distancing.”
State Rep. Beth Bernstein, D-Richland, who has been critical of the Richland election commission’s handling of the election, said she felt reassured by the State Election Commission’s involvement.
“They can really offer the oversight and supervise and make sure the poll workers and managers are trained properly,” Bernstein said. “COVID really threw a monkey wrench into all of this, but it really doesn’t excuse what happened yesterday. There should’ve been better preparation and planning. What I feared would happen, happened.”
The state’s frustration with Tuesday’s election process was palpable in its response: “We know election officials and poll managers were faced with the extraordinarily difficult task of conducting an election in a pandemic,” Whitmire said. “But yet again, voters were unnecessarily subjected to extreme wait times and confusion at polling places.”
For “several years,” the state has provided “training, guidance and recommendations aimed at improving outcomes,” he said. “Unfortunately, those efforts have not produced the desired results.”
Richland County has had trouble conducting its elections for years, dating back to confusion around the 2012 presidential election. Several ballots from both the 2018 midterm election and the Democratic presidential primary in February were also misplaced by officials tasked with counting the ballots.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Gov. Henry McMaster said he will “do whatever’s necessary” so that when people go to polls they’re not going to have an unpleasant experience and all of their votes will be counted. McMaster removed the entire Richland County election board in 2019 after the missing ballots from 2018 were reported.
As many as four County Council races in Richland County could require runoffs in two weeks once Tuesday’s results are certified.
Reporters Maayan Schechter and John Monk contributed
This story was originally published June 10, 2020 at 2:39 PM.
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