Not only is it unclear when the next District 4 election will be, it's also unclear whether that election will have two or four candidates.

Charleston County Board of Elections and Voter Registration Chairman Roy DeHaven summed it up Friday like this: "We know nothing at this point."

Meanwhile, a fifth candidate has thrown her hat in the ring: Former Charleston County School Board Chairwoman Liz Alston said she plans to collect enough signatures to run as an independent or petition candidate for the seat on Nov. 2.

On June 8, Henry Darby and Karen Hollinshead Brown received the most votes in the four-way Democratic primary, but neither received the required 50-percent-plus needed to win outright. The third -place candidate, Robert Mitchell, trailed Brown by only two votes. Edith Askins came in fourth.

Citing problems at the Bayside Manor precinct, where as many as 10 voters said they tried to vote for Mitchell but could not, Mitchell appealed to the Charleston County Democratic Party's executive committee, and they agreed with him that the June 8 election should be done over.

On Saturday, however, the state Democratic Party's executive committee overturned the county party's decision and reinstated a primary runoff between Darby and Brown.

A lawyer for Robert Mitchell said she intends to appeal the state party's decision to the S.C. Supreme Court Monday.

The state party's decision seemed to rest largely on a technicality: that the county party considered Mitchell's appeal on a Wednesday, not a Thursday.

Mitchell's attorney Nancy Bloodgood said the county party had the right to consider the appeal when it did. "There are two statutes, and I believe they conflict," she said. "Had (Darby) been at the hearing, he could have raised that issue."

The county will wait and see how that possible appeal unfolds before doing anything else to begin scheduling a new election, said Sam Howell, attorney to the election board.

Once all appeals are settled, the county will ask Gov. Mark Sanford to set an election date, and the U.S. Justice Department also will have to sign off, Howell said.

Even if Mitchell's appeal doesn't materialize or is quickly settled, "you're still talking the middle of August, at the earliest, that there would be a runoff," Howell said.

Darby said he appealed the county's decision to the state because it wasn't fair to him to require him to rerun in a four-way race when the problems on June 8 wouldn't have affected his position in the don't have it," he said.

Darby said it would have been more fair to have simply held a new election at the Bayside Manor precinct to see whether his runoff opponent would be Brown or Mitchell.

But Howell said he didn't believe the Democratic party had any choice but redoing the election if it found sufficient problems on June 8.

"The problem is state law: When it determines there has been something illegal or irregular taking place in an election, there's only this draconian remedy of redoing the entire election," he said.

District 4 is one of three majority black districts created when a federal judge ruled that County Council had to have its nine members elected from single-member districts instead of at-large, the system in place since 1970. It runs from downtown Charleston to Park Circle in North Charleston. There is no Republican in the race because GOP incumbent A.D. Jordan chose not to run again.

The longer the election uncertainty lingers, the greater challenge the candidates will face getting their voters back to the polls.

"The momentum is no longer there, and we have to drum up more support as we go along," Darby said.

Meanwhile, some candidates could find themselves spending more on attorneys fees than on their next campaign.

"It is an awful lot of time and money and trouble to be on County Council," Bloodgood noted.

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