Final results from Lexington County now in
The final election results in Lexington County are in, some 19 hours after polls closed in South Carolina.
County election officials were working until mid-afternoon on Wednesday to complete the count of thousands of absentee mail-in ballots. Unlike ballots cast using a touch-screen in a voting precinct, those paper ballots have to be read manually and are taking more time this year thanks to the surge in absentee voting.
The final results didn’t alter the earlier reported counts in many competitive races. In the closest state legislative race in Lexington County, state Sen. Nikki Setzler held off a challenge by the GOP’s Chris Smith, with 55% of the vote to Smith’s 44%.
In the only contested county council race, Republican Gene “Bimbo” Jones won a seat on Lexington County Council by beating Democrat Bobby Porter by a 2-to-1 margin, 68% to 32%.
As of mid-morning Wednesday, county election officials have gone through about 56.6% of the absentee mail-in ballots, or about 26,000 absentee ballots are still being counted. By 12:30 p.m., County Elections Director Mary Brack estimated between 5,000 and 6,000 ballots that sustained some damage and were unable to be read by card readers would need to be duplicated before being counted.
In the final reckoning, 145,202 ballots were cast in Lexington County.
This story was originally published November 4, 2020 at 11:33 AM.
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