Photos
Blog
NewslettersState board upholds Bluffton council vote; denies Fletcher protest
jkidd@beaufortgazette.com
rdudley@islandpacket.com
There won't be a special election to determine Bluffton Town Council's new members, after all.
E-Mail it
Print it
tool name
closeAlso in this section
After an appeal hearing in Columbia onWednesday, the S.C. Board of Elections upheld the original Nov. 4, Bluffton Town Council election results in a ruling making Fred Hamilton and Allyne Mitchell the official winners.
The appeal of another local candidate was rejected by a 5-0 vote after he failed to show up for Wednesday's hearing.
Democrat Kent Fletcher lost to Beaufort Republican Tom Davis by 30 percentage points in a S.C. Senate District 46 race between first-time office-seekers.
Fletcher said the race was erroneously omitted from the ballots of some eligible voters in Beaufort, Bluffton, Burton and Lady's Island. He said he was shorted by about 10,000 votes.
A motion to dismiss Fletcher's protest, filed by Davis' lawyers, countered that, at most, about 5,000 people received incorrect ballots -- not nearly enough for Fletcher to overcome a 17,462-vote deficit, even if all had voted for the Bluffton resident.
Fletcher, an enrollment adviser for the University of Phoenix's Savannah campus and a former Marine, said he missed Wednesday's hearing because he didn't see the certified notification letter from the S.C. State Election Commission until Tuesday, his first day off work since Election Day. Fletcher didn't have the letter handy when he spoke to The Beaufort Gazette on Wednesday but said he thought the letter had a Nov. 19 postmark.
Fletcher said he called the state board Tuesday to request the hearing be delayed or moved to Beaufort County.
"The hearing was held according to the law, but there was no protestant to provide a case," Garry Baum, a spokesman for the state board. "It has happened before, but it has happened very few times."
Fletcher said he intends to file a Freedom of Information request to review voter records and then will decide whether to pursue his protest in court.
Fletcher, like the third- and fourth-place finishers in the Bluffton election, has nine days to appeal the decisions to the S.C. Supreme Court.
Hamilton, an incumbent Bluffton Council member, and Mitchell placed first and second in the Nov. 4 balloting. An address-coding error prevented an undetermined number of Bluffton voters from casting ballots in the council and mayoral races. That same error also mistakenly allowed some who live outside town limits to vote in those contests.
Jeff Fulgham, who finished 26 votes behind Mitchell, filed a protest with the Beaufort County Board of Elections after the official results were announced.
The county board, after hearing Fulgham's protest Nov. 7, decided to hold a special election due to the 166 mis-coded addresses.
Hamilton and Mitchell appealed that decision to the South Carolina State Board of Elections. The state panel heard that appeal Wednesday.
The state board voted 4-1 to overturn the county board's decision to hold a new election. It instead upheld the original Nov. 4 results.
The candidates were not allowed to testify during Wednesday's three-hour hearing, which included a closed-door discussion among the five board members. Arguments were based on the transcript of the county board's hearing as well as previously-filed letters of protest and appeal.
Both Fulgham and fourth-place finisher Normand E. "Gus" Thomas said after the hearing Wednesday they were unsure whether they would appeal to the state Supreme Court.
Hamilton said Wednesday night he was pleased with the state board's decision and that -- despite the fact that some residents were not allowed to vote -- he still did not understand claims of voter disenfranchisement in the original election.
"No one was denied the opportunity to vote. Some of them were not privileged to... but no one filed a complaint that they were disenfranchised," he said.
Mitchell did not return calls seeking comment.
@Nyx.CommentBody@