The increasingly bitter battle over a flawed Horry County Council election may go to South Carolina's highest court.

Republican candidate Joe DeFeo said Thursday that he filed an appeal with the state Supreme Court that challenges county and state election board decisions to hold a new election in District 3.

DeFeo says he hopes the high court will affirm his slim 37-vote win against Democratic incumbent Marion Foxworth and forgo a new vote that would be unlikely to draw the large crowds that turned out Nov. 2.

Foxworth says a new election will give a chance to make up for flaws in the voting system that might have left some votes uncounted.

"There is a [judicial] fast track because it is an election" and the court may decide within a month whether it will hear the appeal, DeFeo said.

For now, plans for a new election will be on hold while the Supreme Court reviews the case, said Will Folks, spokesman for Gov. Mark Sanford.

Sanford's office and the U.S. Department of Justice must set a date and vet any new election.

"It's got to get out of the court system, and once it has completed that process, the local [election] commission has to ask the governor to set a new date," Folks said. "Obviously, nothing is going to happen until this process is over."

DeFeo beat Foxworth by 37 votes Nov. 2, but the county election commission later found that about 90 voters might have cast ballots in the wrong district, enough to swing the election.

The Supreme Court appeal says Foxworth has failed to produce any disenfranchised voters despite proof that the election had problems.

"Had even a few voters come forward to testify at the [state election commission] hearing, I would have accepted his claim and agreed to a new election," DeFeo said in a statement released Thursday. "But the truth is that not one voter ... came forward to testify at the meeting."

DeFeo said none of the disenfranchised voters mentioned in Foxworth's arguments was ever subpoenaed to appear.

A poll worker who provided information to the county election board was never identified or subpoenaed, he said.

"This is a revival of the 'good ol' boy' system in Horry County," DeFeo's statement reads. "This should be a wake-up call to all Horry County's residents."

Foxworth called DeFeo's claims an "interesting turn of events" and said he refuses to subpoena a resident over how they voted.

He said that would be "almost un-American."

"I am not surprised that the slander and lies and invective against me is continuing," Foxworth said. "I am somewhat surprised that he is now spewing that at the county election staff and the county staff and a number of the board of canvassers from Horry County."