A Libertarian voter in Chester County, South Carolina, received this absentee ballot, which only lists President Obama and Mitt Romney for President. The voter complained and was told there wasn’t room for any other candidates. Now the county says it only printed one such ballot and all the others include all the legally-qualified candidates. However, neither the county nor the State Board of Elections will talk about how such a faulty ballot came to be printed.
I’ll tell you how it came to be printed, the top two don’t want actual discussion of issues.
All of Chester County is in the same congressional and senate district, but the county is intricately divided between two house districts and part of the third. One of the house districts has a 55% Black VAP, the other 21% Black VAP, while the county is 38% Black. That is, the house districts were drawn for purposes of segregating voters on the basis of race in order to satisfy the Voting Rights Act.
There are 7 county council/school board districts. The voter was also in a watershed conservation district.
If it is true that the absentee ballot is unique, then there must be a small area that ended up in its own combination of house districts, county council district, and watershed conservation district.
Does the voter live east of Lando?
The lower right corner of the ballot has a sequence of numbers that likely indicates the ballot type (combination of races).
It is not clear to whom the voter complained – it could have been a low level functionary who was just blowing the voter off. It also not clear to whom the State Election Commission nor the county election commission would not talk.
Given that the write-in space following the 5th candidate was also omitted I’d suspect a software problem, perhaps assisted by an operator error.
The county election officials would enter the candidates for each race, which they must have done correctly to get all 5 presidential candidates for the rest of the county. They would have a separate file with the addresses for each race. Each area with a unique combination of races would have its own ballot – which would simply involve formatting all the races.
SOUTH CAROLINA IS A DEN OF CORRUPTION LEAD BY ARROGRANT POLITICIANS, LAWYERS AND THE 2 PARTY MONOPOLY, THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM IS THE GOOD OLE BOY TYPE WHERE A REDNECK CAN BEAT THE HELLOUT OF HIS WIFE AND WALK
I hope this voter sues the state and Virgil Goode/Johnson and other candidates whose name were to be printed need to take action.
I’m co-chair of the SC Green Party and I communicated directly with Chris Whitmire of the SC State Election commission about this.
He informed me that the ballot in question IS a sample ballot and that it was an older version printed before the convention parties had certified their candidates then distributed months ago and given out to the voter weeks ago. He says that the incomplete versions of the ballots should not be given out now and he’s been reassured by the Chester County election commission that complete sample ballots are being distributed Chester County from here on out.
Whitmire said that all absentee ballots were printed with the correct, ballot certified candidates, including the Green, Libertarian and Constitution candidates, as well as the straight ticket option for these parties.
As to why the SCSEC would print up sample ballots before all the candidates were certified, he didn’t say.
How can you distinguish sample ballots from official ballots?
The sample ballot is stamped “SAMPLE”. This is barely discernible on the PDF scan of the ballot the voter was given.
#7 OK I see it. It’s probably a light gray that didn’t reproduce well when the scan was made. Is it legal to use a sample ballot for absentee voting in SC?
I can see the county election officials doing a test run with an incomplete set of presidential candidates. With 7 county council districts, and parts of 3 house seats, plus other districts, they could have a couple of dozen ballot types in a not so populous county (30,000). Since the voting machines are only programmed a few times a year, you would be concerned about missing races in some areas.
In Texas, the presidential candidates are certified by the SOS after the other candidates. Someone programming a voting machine could type in the names of Obama and Romney even though they weren’t official yet, just to make sure there is a presidential race.