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Article published: Dec 7, 2004
District 35 Senate seat hearing today
Commission's ruling will decide winner or order a re-vote

Voters will learn today whether they have a state senator in District 35 or if they'll have to return to the polls to elect one.

The South Carolina State Election Commission, at 2221 Devine St. in Columbia, will hold a hearing at 1 p.m. to hear from Republican candidate Dickie Jones, who is asking for a new election based on alleged Election Day irregularities.

He lost to incumbent Phil Leventis, D-Sumter, by 86 votes. The final vote tally, 15,540 to 15,454, is separated by a margin of only 0.2 percent.

If the State Election Commission lets the election results stand, the possibility remains that Jones could appeal to the Senate itself. According to the state Constitution, "each house shall judge of the election returns and qualifications of its own members."

However, Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston, said the Senate has never actually handled an election protest. Staffers are busy researching how to handle such an appeal.

JONES

LEVENTIS

J Seth, Jones' law partner, said Jones doesn't expect to appeal to the Senate. He expects the election commission to deliver a solid ruling, either for or against Jones, that would be very difficult to appeal.

"We want the voters from Sumter and Lee County, District 35, to decide it, not the Senate, not the election commission," Seth said.

However, Jones would consider an appeal to the Senate if the election commission doesn't order a new election, Seth said.

Jones could not be reached Monday afternoon.

Leventis said it would be extraordinary if people who don't live in Sumter or Lee counties ended up choosing a state senator for the district.

"If they can do it on 86 votes, why couldn't they do it on 860?" he said. If raw partisan politics take over, he said, "why should people worry about voting at all?"

Any differences in the election results were minor and inadvertent, Leventis said, and wouldn't affect the outcome of the race.

Columbia attorney Steve Hamm, who also represented Sumter County Auditor Jomarie Crocker when the local Democratic Party sued to stop her write-in petition, filed Jones' protest Nov. 16.

In it, he alleged that more ballots were cast in Sumter County than the number of voters signing in at the polls, that fail-safe votes were counted that shouldn't have been counted, that provisional ballots were incorrectly cast along with regular ballots and that absentee ballots were thrown out because of election worker error.

Both candidates lost votes during the mandatory recount. Because the initial margin between the two candidates was less than 1 percent, state law required a recount. After the recount, held Nov. 12, Leventis' tally dropped from 15,632 to 15,540 and Jones' total fell from 15,577 to 15,454.

The write-in campaign for Sumter County auditor caused the dramatic differences in the totals, said Sumter County Registration and Election Director Pat Jefferson. She attributed the extra votes to human error during the hand-count of the write-in ballots. Sumter County voters cast more than 6,000 write-in ballots this election.

Contact Staff Writer Leslie Cantu at lesliec@theitem.com or 803-774-1250.