By Paul Gable
The Preston Brittain for Congress Campaign sent out an e-mail to volunteers and supporters Wednesday night saying there would be a runoff for the 7th Congressional District Democratic nomination.
The e-mail said, “I am proud to announce that we have won a spot in the runoff election. ”
However, indications are that the final determination will be made by the S.C. Election Commission when it meets Friday June 15, 2012 to certify the results from the June 12th primary election.
At issue are the nearly 2,300 votes Ted Vick received in Tuesday’s voting, two weeks after Vick dropped out of the race. Vick’s name remained on the ballot. The S.C. Election Commission did not include Vick’s votes in its published results on scvotes.org.
State Democratic Party Chairman Dick Harpootlian has said the party would be willing to go to court to secure a runoff or, alternatively, forcing the election commission to run the primary over again without Vick on the ballot.
Harpootlian said not counting those votes disenfranchises all those voters who cast the Vick votes. It should also be noted that S.C. included and published votes for Michelle Bachmann in the state 2012 Republican Presidential Primary after she had dropped out of the race.
With Vick’s votes included in the total, Tinubu garnered 49 percent of the total vote, which would require a runoff since she finished below the 50 percent plus one vote threshold to win the primary outright. Without counting the Vick votes, Tinubu recorded 53 percent of the votes.
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