Lexington County, SC (WLTX) - The South Carolina primaries may be on Tuesday, but thousands of voters won't be able to cast their ballot because there is no one to vote for.
Hundreds of candidates have been ousted from state and county election races after the U.S. Supreme court ruled the candidates improperly filed for office.
Currently, 248 candidates have been removed and party officials are still looking in to those remaining candidates.
According to state election officials, come Tuesday about 300 polling places in 14 counties will be closed because there's no one on the ballot.
Other races will be uncontested like the Lexington County Council District 3 and 5 seats. Wes Howard, a republican running for district 3 was removed making republican Kent Collins the winner by default. Brian Duncan, a republican for district 5, was removed making incumbent republican Bobby Keisler the winner by default. These are just 2 examples of what candidates and voters around the state are facing.
Officials with the Lexington County Election Commission have been busy trying to get absentee voters squared away as well as get things in place for Election Day.
"We've had a number of candidates that have been taken off the ballot for various reasons," explained Linda Griffith with the Lexington County Election Commission. "And of course these absentees have been voting on these machines for a couple of weeks and the ballots have changed. So therefore, we've had to put signs in them to let people know if they cast their vote for that person it will not count."
Ousted candidates do have one more shot at being on the November ballot; a petition. Guidelines include that a candidate must gather signatures from 5% of the registered voters in their districts. Also, candidates can only submit petitions with original signatures. Petitions must be turned in by noon on July 16th.
Petition candidates would not fall under a political party; they would simply appear as "petition candidates" on the November ballot.
Polls open at 7:00 am June 12th, and will close at 7:00 pm.