PICKENS COUNTY — The School District of Pickens County Board District 7 race has come under fire after allegations that emergency ballots used in some precincts didn’t include local races.

Last Tuesday, Alice Hendricks Vander Linden lost to Philip Healy in the race for the newly created seventh school board seat — or did she? Because although the closeness of the numbers requires an automatic recount, it appears over 130 residents never had a chance to vote on it.

According to Executive Director of the Pickens County Board of Elections Rodney Allen, the Dacusville, Nine Forks and Crossroads precincts — all in the District 7 area — were included in the seven precincts affected by voting machines that weren’t loaded correctly.

Once the error was discovered, emergency (paper) ballots were brought in, but a letter from Allen to Sheree Chapman dated Nov. 13 and obtained by The Sentinel-Progress, states 148 failsafe ballots were used as emergency and 137 voters who were eligible to vote for the district 7 seat never had the chance.

To those who would write the election protest off as nothing more than “sour grapes,” it’s worth noting Linden lost the election by 22 votes.

Linden has since filed a formal protest and is calling for a new election stating that some of the paper ballots didn’t include the school board race, some people who used voting machines didn’t get to vote in the school board race, some voting machines malfunctioned or weren’t properly operated, causing a miscount, not all of the voting machine results were included in the vote totals and state election laws and regulations weren’t followed.

“The problems with this election were so pervasive and significant that the only proper remedy is to have a new election,” Linden wrote.

“I served as the school board trustee for the Dacusville and Easley community for the last four years,” wrote Henry Wilson on social media. “After a successful four years of huge growth in our school district, it was time for me to move on and let others bring their experience and voice to the board.

“Unfortunately, there were some issues during the recent election to fill the board seat representing the Dacusville section of my old district. The current vote count gives Philip Healy a 21 vote advantage over Alice Vander Linden, but due to some unfortunate issues, 137 voters were clearly disenfranchised from the opportunity to vote for their new board representative.”

Wilson said had the election had been “a crushing blowout” — like the School Board elections in Liberty and Six Mile — disenfranchising 137 votes would likely not have had much affect on the election.

“But that is not the case in Dacusville,” he said before noting 137 disenfranchised votes is seven times the margin of victory in the election.

An official protest has been filed for the Linden/Healy race.
https://www.sentinelprogress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/web1_vote1-1.jpgAn official protest has been filed for the Linden/Healy race.
137 voters denied voice in school board election seperated by 22 votes

By Kasie Strickland

kstrickland@cmpapers.com

Reach Kasie Strickland at 864-855-0355.