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Former election board member says Governor's removal order 'surprised' him

A former member of the Richland election board says human error not only thing to blame

COLUMBIA, S.C. — A former member of the Richland County Voter Registration and Election Board is speaking out for the first time after being removed last week.

Member Pete Kennedy had served for four years before being removed with the rest of his colleagues by Governor Henry McMaster last Thursday. He says he understands why the Governor did what he did, but said it would happen again if certain issues aren't fixed.

"Richland County will, in the future, continue to have these problems because there's a huge dynamic involved in this. We have the County Council we have to deal with, the County administration we have to deal with, and that is a huge hindrance to us right now," Kennedy said.

"There's many actions we have to take and votes we have to take that we need legal guidance and we don't have that legal guidance. So, we just have to shoot from the hip on some things," Kennedy continued.

It's one of the reasons Kennedy says a new election board will not automatically fix Richland County's election headaches.

Kennedy told WLTX the Board does not receive funding from the County for legal fees or enough funding to hire an attorney.

He was not able to provide a recent specific example of when legal counsel would have been helpful before a vote.

But, several days after being removed by the Governor, Kennedy said the move caught him off guard.

"My reaction to the executive order was surprise. I didn't think that something like that would come down as quick as it did. And I thought there would be more discussion involved to find out exactly where the problems within the board lay, if they were the responsibility of the board," Kennedy said.

Kennedy said he and others were responsible after more than a thousand votes weren't counted in November, but disagreed with the portion of the Governor's order that said the board had not addressed the issues.

"We should have had better tracking system of knowing where each machine or each flashcard was, and we didn't. So, that's our fault. We've already instituted changes, those were made immediately based on the input from the report we sent over to the SEC [State Election Commission]," Kennedy added.

Earlier this month, Executive Director Rokey Suleman resigned over the 1,040 not-counted votes.

"Had to be, because he is the Director. He's responsible for this and from the Elections Board, or from the Elections Agency, there are three legs on our stool. We need to register people, we need to give them a place to vote, we need to count their votes. A three-legged stool works great, a two-legged stool doesn't work at all. So, he fell on the sword for what happened and I admire him for doing that," Kennedy said on the resignation.

In an email detailing what happened in November, Suleman said a variety of machine and human errors led to the missing votes.

"As long as we have the existing equipment, we will have problems because they are going to be related to whatever happens. Now, you have other people that will tell you 'No no no, it's not the equipment problems.' It is the equipment problems, and with a new system coming in hopefully a lot of that is going to disappear," Kennedy added.

Richland County also had roughly 500 poll workers never show up between 2018's primary and general election, according to Kennedy.

Kennedy said he had regrets over the contentious last meeting the board had several days ago. At the meeting, arguments broke out between board members and audience members, along with State House representatives from Richland County.

"Personally, I'm extremely embarrassed by what happened. That should have not happened. It did. One of our members of the board is a rather combative person and that is what happened, things got out of hand. Senator [Dick] Harpootlian [D-Richland] was asking very valid questions, but it just became a dog fight between the two of them. I wish it had not, but it did," Kennedy said.

The former member also told WLTX he does support lawmakers' push to move to paper ballots here in the state, saying getting rid of the current machines will start eliminating some of the issues they're seeing in Richland County.

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