Not every voter in South Carolina will have something to vote for on June 12, according to the State Election Commission. Not all of that is due to recent court orders that disqualified hundred of candidates before the parties’ primaries next week.
Election Commission Spokesman Chris Whitmire says it may be best for voters to check which races are contested before heading out to the polls Tuesday.
“There’s none of the constitutional officers and there’s no statewide U.S. Senate this year, that happens every six years. So every 12 years,the off-Senate year falls on a presidential year,” explains Whitmire. “So that results in some counties having only part of their precincts open. Allendale County will not have a primary at all this year.”
Add to that two recent state Supreme Court rulings that de-certified more than 200 candidates across the state and more precincts will be closed.
Whitmire gives this example: “You may have a county where they had sheriff and county council. One of the sheriff’s candidates is de-certified and now you’ve got one person unopposed. All you have left is council and that’s only part of the county and everybody else in the county’s got no one to vote for.
Whitmire says there are two steps to find out what offices are being challenged:
-Go to SCvotes.org and look up your registered district at “Find your polling place” button
-Go back to home page and find updated to “candidates by county” list and see who is left in your chosen party primary.
Because of late changes, there was not enough time for the commision to take all de-certified candidates off of the ballot, so the county election commissions will not count the votes cast for ineligible names. Also, the parties are supposed to be posting signs at polling places to alert voters about ineligible candidates.
