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Greene's Opponent Calls for Investigation of SC Election Results‎

By Jeff Mays on Jun 15th 2010 2:55PM
Filed under: News, Politics, Race and Civil Rights

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Greene's Opponent Calls for Investigation of South Carolina Election Results‎

The man who lost to South Carolina's newest, and let's just say "interesting," Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate wants the results of the primary thrown out.

For the first time, losing candidate and former state lawmaker Vic Rawl is asking the Democratic Committee to toss out the primary results, which show that Alvin Greene, an unemployed military veteran who didn't campaign was victorious by a margin of 59 percent to 41 percent.

The AP writes:

Rawl, now a Charleston County council member, says he campaigned statewide, put 17,000 miles on his car and, in the days before the primary, sent out hundreds of thousands of e-mails and automated phone calls seeking voter support. Greene claims he traveled the state to talk to voters, but he had no campaign organization and no Web site. He did not return a call Monday.

Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, South Carolina's top Democrat in the U.S. House, called on state and federal authorities to probe how Greene came up with the money needed to file as a U.S. Senate candidate. Clyburn says he thinks someone put Greene up as a shell candidate to embarrass the Democratic Party.




Rawl also said that he believes there were irregularities with the voting machines. He claims voters told him that Greene's name, rather than his, came up when they used the touch-screen voting system. A Republican voter also said that Greene's name appeared on her ballot.


"As to who did it, why they did, whether it was an accident or was intentional, I have no idea and I don't feel comfortable commenting on that," Rawl said.

Greene is indeed an odd candidate. He is facing a felony charge for showing obscene photos to a University of South Carolina student. Like everyone else in this country, Greene is presumed innocent until proven otherwise and has declined withdrawing. (Rawl pictured below).

Greene's Opponent Calls for Investigation of South Carolina Election Results‎

Another question is where Greene got the $10,000 filing fee to run for office. When he was arrested, he told the court that he earned just $1,160 per month.

To me, the bigger question here is the accuracy of the voting machines. Given the way in which our political system works, it seems unlikely that an unknown candidate with no money who didn't campaign and who sounds incoherent at times, could win almost 60 percent of the vote.

Ever since the Al Gore and George W. Bush election catastrophe, the security and reliability of this nation's voting machines have been called into question. There is no uniform standard, so either states and municipalities are using outdated machines or moving forward with new electronic technology that is vulnerable to manipulation.

If voter machine malfunction was found to be an issue, maybe it will prompt states like South Carolina to examine the technology that helps organize our democracy.

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