TheItem.com Printer Friendly Version

This is a printer friendly version of an article from The Item.com
To print this article open the file menu and choose Print.

Close

Article published: Dec 8, 2004
Senate election upheld
Leventis maintains Dist. 35 seat; Jones says he won't appeal

COLUMBIA — The election is over — state Sen. Phil Leventis, D-Sumter, will represent District 35 for the next four years.

The South Carolina State Election Commission, after five and a half hours of testimony followed by an hour and a half-long executive session Tuesday afternoon, decided to uphold the election results and deny Republican Dickie Jones' request for a new election.

After the unanimous vote by the five-member commission, Jones said he will not appeal the decision to the state Senate. In his written protest, Jones contested 1,338 votes, but at the hearing his attorney focused on 117 votes.

"I'm sure that I won't be appealing at this point," Jones said, adding that it's time to move past the election.

Because the Nov. 2 election results were within 1 percent of each other, the Sumter and Lee county election commissions held a mandatory recount of the vote on Nov. 12. At that time the state election commission certified Leventis as the winner, with 15,540 votes to Jones' 15,454 votes.

Jones then appealed the election to the state election commission, requesting a new election. He also protested fail-safe votes cast in Lee County, but during Tuesday's hearing attorney Steve Hamm of Columbia said he would not pursue the 13 fail-safe votes cast in Lee.
Leventis said he is pleased with the results and looks forward to getting back to work. Although Leventis' relations with some Republicans have been testy, he said he doesn't anticipate any problems, because the "vast middle" of the Senate works together.

Jones sought out Leventis to congratulate him after the commission voted, without discussion, to uphold the election. Though the commission didn't vote until 8 p.m., most audience members stuck it out and waited for the decision.

The 85-degree, standing-room-only room was packed with election commissioners and workers, local party officials and the candidates' supporters.

The Sumter County Election Commission will learn from the problems in this election, Leventis said, but he doesn't believe the commission did a poor job.

If someone were to audit any election in the state, he said, "you'd find these issues and more."

Hamm raised several issues during the protest hearing. He reported scattered individual problems of felons voting or people voting twice, but the greatest number of questionable votes came from discrepancies between the number of ballots cast and the number of voters who signed the poll books.

According to state law, a voter must sign the poll book before receiving a ballot.
Hamm argued that the commission counted 108 more votes than the number of people signing in at the polls. With only 86 votes separating the two candidates, that alone could affect the outcome of the election.

Pat Jefferson, the director of the Sumter County Voter Registration and Election Office, testified that her staff went back and counted up all the signatures. When they accounted for signatures on the general election poll books, the city poll books and provisional ballot envelopes, the staff found only 15 more votes than the number of people who signed the books.

City voters should sign both the general election book and the city book, whether they're casting a regular ballot or provisional ballot, but some voters managed to get a ballot without signing the general election book. Many provisional ballot voters did not sign either book.

At the Crosswell precinct, election workers asked voters to sign only one of the books, resulting in 382 signatures on the general election book and 383 additional signatures on the city list.

Poll workers were also confused about the process at the Hampton Park precinct.

Dr. Linwood Bradford, who has served as clerk, or supervisor of poll managers, in four elections, testified that his workers gave voters two ballots each for the first 45 minutes of Election Day, because they were confused about handling a city election in addition to the general election.

"This is the first time I'd ever participated in a municipal election," Bradford said.

Bradford called the county election commission and discovered that voters were only supposed to receive one ballot, so his workers went through the line and retrieved most of the double ballots. He estimated that four or five people might have cast two ballots.

During a break, Bradford said he had participated in poll manager training before the election, but "sometimes it just goes over your head."

"The single biggest word for the whole election was confusion," Bradford said.

Jefferson had no comment after the ruling.

Terry Horne, the county election commission's attorney, and Stephen Bates, Leventis' attorney, argued that even with the discrepancies brought out in testimony, Leventis would still win the race by 50 votes.

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