After voting issues, SC elections chief orders hand-counted audit of Columbia race
The South Carolina Election Commission’s interim director is calling for a hand-counted audit of the results of Columbia’s runoff elections after there were issues at a number of polling places early Tuesday morning. An audit after an election is common, but the commission says it wants an enhanced role in this one.
“While this election is not a statewide election, given the nature of issues in Richland County, SEC Interim Executive Director Howard Knapp has ordered a hand count audit of this election,” a statement from the state Election Commission read Tuesday afternoon. “While the hand count must be completed by Richland County, SEC staff will present to observe both the tabulation of results and hand count audit process.”
Election Commission spokesman Chris Whitmire said the audit would likely happen Wednesday. He indicated the practice of having a hand-counted audit after an election is common. But in this instance, he said the state Election Commission would select the precincts and would “have a presence there while it’s going on.”
Whitmire said the county would run election totals on Tuesday night just as it would on any other election night. Those unofficial totals will have to be certified by the city of Columbia Election Commission on Thursday, as is practice.
There were problems at about a dozen polling places as voting began Tuesday, though those issues were cleared up later in the morning.
There are two races on the city’s ballots Tuesday: A mayoral runoff between District 4 Councilman Daniel Rickenmann and at-large Councilwoman Tameika Isaac Devine, and an at-large Columbia City Council race between attorney Tyler Bailey and public health researcher Dr. Aditi Bussells.
A late Tuesday afternoon statement from the state commission detailed the problems that occurred at some precincts.
The initial issue was a “human error” by the election system vendor, Election Systems & Software, in preparing the electronic poll books for the election, the commission said. An “erroneous file” in those poll books caused some voters’ to receive an incorrect code that prevented ballots from being displayed.
However, the state Election Commission also said the error from the vendor should have been caught by the Richland County Department of Elections and Voter Registration by checking the file before it was used in the election.
The commission also said when the problem popped up at polling places, poll managers needed to switch to a workaround by providing voters a blank ballot card and having the voter insert that card into a ballot marking device. After that, the poll manager would select the voter’s ballot style manually.
Polls are set to close at 7 p.m. Tuesday.
This story was originally published November 16, 2021 at 4:59 PM.
