More than 1,300 Charleston voters received wrong absentee ballots in the mail
More than 1,300 Charleston voters received incorrect absentee ballots in the county home to South Carolina’s largest city, elections officials said Wednesday.
With about 59,000 absentee ballots mailed in Charleston County to date, that means one in 50 voters received a wrong ballot. Elections officials have promised the corrected ballots will arrive in the next three to five days.
The error was discovered late Tuesday when veterinarian LaDon Paige, a former Charleston County Council candidate, noticed her ballot did not include the very contest she ran for in the primary.
Paige ran unsuccessfully for Charleston County Council District 6, which covers parts of West Ashley and North Charleston.
Charleston County Republican Party Chairman Maurice Washington said Paige notified him of the missing contest on her and her husband’s ballots late Tuesday night. Washington said he then alerted Charleston County elections officials to the error.
“Accuracy is our biggest thing that we focus on, so we want to make sure we’re responsive to issues,” said Joe Debney, director of the Charleston County Board of Elections and Registration. “We want voters’ ballots to be correct and to be counted correctly, and most of all we want voters to trust the process. “
In total, Debney said 1,324 ballots were mailed without two Charleston County Council races. The errors centered on the down-ballot county council contests for District 6 and District 7.
On Wednesday evening, it was later discovered that a third county council contest, the race for District 4, was impacted as well. Charleston County Councilman Henry Darby, the incumbent who represents the district, is running unopposed in that contest.
An estimate on the number of ballots affected in the District 4 race was not immediately available.
Debney said it was a transposition error in their voting system that resulted in generating the wrong ballot styles.
In addition to the mailed ballots, the Charleston County Board of Elections and Registration reported another 219 voters received incorrect ballots when they voted in-person absentee on voting machines.
In the Charleston County District 6 race, Debney said 49 voters saw ballots on their machine’s respective touchscreen without the contest when they should have. Meanwhile, he said, 28 voters had the contest but should not have been able to vote on it.
In Charleston County District 7, Debney said 34 voters did not get to vote on the contest when they should have been able to, while 108 voters got ballots on a race they should not have been able to have.
Debney said election officials have since gone through “every single ballot style” to make sure they are correct. He said it’s always good practice to verify what’s on your ballot.
“I don’t want people to feel like the absentee process is fraught with issues. We want people to still do it. We still want people to vote and to trust the voting process. And we’re absolutely committed to making sure everything is accurate,” Debney said.
Washington, the leader of the Charleston County GOP, said he has confidence in the both Debney and the county elections office’s ability to carry out the upcoming election.
He also praised Paige for saying something when she noticed her ballot was amiss.
“She did a great civic duty — one she should be proud of,” Washington said. “Imagine if it had not been here and it had gone unnoticed. It could have been a horrible situation.”
Colleen Condon, the chair of the Charleston County Democratic Party, said she was notified of the error early Wednesday morning.
“Diligence is important. Mistakes are rare, but I think (Debney) is doing everything that is within his power to cure it, which is important. We all want accurate and fair elections,” Condon said.
Debney said the voters who were sent the wrong ballots will receive corrected ballots in the mail in the next three to five days, “if not sooner,” he said. The ballots will come with instructions about how to return them.
With less than three weeks to go until Election Day, voting officials are bracing for a historic voter turnout.
During the first five days of early voting in Charleston County, more than 7,000 ballots had been cast.
That’s almost double the 3,788 votes cast in Charleston County during the first full two full weeks of absentee voting in 2016.
This story was originally published October 14, 2020 at 3:46 PM.
