3 incredibly tight Midlands school board races are heading to a recount
Three incredibly close races in Lexington County are headed to a recount after the county election commission certified the results of the 2022 election on Friday.
All three races will decide who serves on area school boards after at least two candidates finished within 1 percentage point of each other in the final count, triggering an automatic recount. Those tight races are both a result of the large number of candidates who ran this year and the contentiousness of some of the races.
Lexington County will begin the recount on Monday, and continue until all votes — more than 160,000 across the three school districts — are counted all over again to ensure the final count is correct. New board members will take office once the final vote totals are certified.
In Lexington-Richland 5, just 16 votes separate former Chapin High School principal Mike Satterfield from incumbent school board vice chairman Ken Loveless, who may be heading off the board after one term.
Satterfield’s lead grew slightly after the commission reviewed provisional and fail safe ballots from Tuesday’s election. After the initial count, he led Loveless by just 14 votes, out of almost 32,000 cast.
The top two candidates in the Lexington County area of Lexington-Richland 5 will take seats on the school board. The first place candidate, Elizabeth Barnhardt, was just 104 votes ahead of second place, or 0.33% of the overall vote. Outgoing board chairwoman Jan Hammond opted not to run for another term, leaving her seat open.
In the Richland County portion of the school district, Kevin Scully and Kimberly Snipes both won election to the board, with Scully seven percentage points ahead of third-place Nikki Gardner.
In a race for three open seats in Lexington 1, Katie McCown finished in third, 401 votes ahead of Harriet Poe Coker — or 0.4% of the vote. Each finished with around 10% of the total vote. Beth Shealy was first with 19% and Chris Rice had 15%.
In Lexington 2, four candidates were running for three seats, and the bottom two, Joseph Hightower and Kevin Key, were separated by six votes and 0.2% of the vote, with Key slightly ahead of Hightower. Christina Rucker and Linda Alford-Wooten will fill the other two seats.
This story was originally published November 11, 2022 at 5:36 PM.
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