COLUMBIA -- The State Law Enforcement Division could soon be investigating charges of S.C. Senate District 30 election "irregularities" that were presented Thursday night to the S.C. Democratic Party's executive committee.

Evidence presented by candidate Tim Norwood's legal team also was apparently more than sufficient to convince committee members to throw out the results of the June 8 Democratic primary, voting 18-3 for an entirely new election.

It was all part of an eight-hour drama that began Thursday evening with a protest that was ultimately dismissed involving House District 122 in Jasper and Hampton counties.

The heat turned up once the committee began listening to arguments, mostly from attorneys for Norwood and candidate Kent Williams, concerning allegations of impropriety during the District 30 race.

Voting analyst Robert Murray told committee members that he discovered 677 instances where proper election procedures were violated.

"We found many instances of issues," he said. "Procedure was absolutely ignored and the results of the election are completely unreliable."

Several of those issues included the failure of poll managers to initial entries involving voters' signatures, as well as instances where voters did not sign in the poll registry but their votes were still processed.

Also entered into evidence was Williams' financial filing report, revealing an individual who was paid $100 for distributing campaign literature on his behalf. Murray alleged the same person could also be connected to many absentee ballots cast by voters at a Mullins nursing home.

"The most damning evidence of voter fraud came from several residents who signed sworn affidavits that they were tricked into signing absentee ballots," Michelle Macrina, executive director of the S.C. Democratic Party, said Friday.

"We don't know who those votes were cast for," she added. "The executive committee directed the chairman, Joe Ervin, to share with SLED all of the information."

SLED spokeswoman Kathryn Richardson said the agency had not yet received any formal request to begin an investigation into the matter by Friday afternoon.

By 1 a.m. Friday, following several hours of debate and testimony, the executive committee had heard enough.

"It adds up that there was a grand design to get certain votes in a bundled fashion," said one committee member.

These and other issues present several new twists on the District 30 race in addition to the holding of a new election. There's still the question, for example, of whether the runoff scheduled for Tuesday still will take place.

"There was some discussion of that, because I'm sure there will be some absentee ballots already cast in the runoff," Macrina said.

Ultimately, Norwood said, he believed the evidence presented Thursday night was solid.

"What was revealed is that there are individuals who are soliciting absentee ballots from people that have dementia and Alzheimer's, or are illiterate and uneducated, basically conspiring to obtain these votes for candidates of their particular choice," he said following the hearing.

Norwood expressed gratitude toward the committee and its decision to move forward with a fresh start.

"We're excited," he said. "All we've ever wanted was a fair and accurate count. At one point, we're up by six and all of a sudden they find 25 votes and we're out. I owe it to my future constituents to fight this again and expose some of this corruption going on in the electoral process."

Williams, too, said he was looking forward to moving ahead, but wouldn't comment further on the allegations.

"The executive committee has spoken and I respect that," he said. "We've just got to run again and we're prepared to do that. We're ready to go."