Another Day, Another Lawsuit in Senate 41 Race

American courts are often lampooned for cases that seem to drag on forever, the lawsuit over S.C. State Senate District 41 seems tailor-made for the SNL treatment.

After the South Carolina State Supreme Court weighed in and upheld Circuit Court Judge Earnest Kinard's ruling ordering the Charleston County Republican Party to hold a new primary in the race, some might have thought the case was finally over. Now, as WISTV.com reports, a Charleston County voter has appealed that ruling to the federal court system.

Reginald Williams, represented by Harpootlian Law - a firm run by South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Dick Harpootlian - brought a suit against South Carolina under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. That section requires South Carolina and more than a dozen other states to get approval from the U.S. Department of Justice before making any changes to voting. Williams argues that requiring a new primary was a voting change that falls under Section 5 and that the state should sought DOJ approval before putting the name of a disqualified candidate on that ballot.

Paul Thurmond finished first in that primary, ahead of Sen. Walter Hundley — who won the seat in a special election to fill the unfinished term of Glenn McConnell who resigned the seat earlier this year to take over as Lieutenant Governor — and Wally Burbage.

In the same ruling in which Kinard ordered a new primary, he also ruled that GOP candidate Paul Thurmond was ineligible to appear on the Party's ballot in the June primary already held for the Senate District 41 race.

The Charleston County GOP and Thurmond maintained that he qualified for the "public official exemption" under the candidate filing law that would have relieved him from having to file a paper copy of his Statement of Economic Interest form. Kinard found that Thurmond's position as a part-time prosecutor for the City of North Charleston did not meet the threshhold for the exemption, and said he should have been removed from the ballot like more than 200 other candidates across the state.

Those candidate were stricken from ballots because they did not file paper copies of their SEI forms when filing as candidates with their county parties. The confusion stemmed from the General Assembly mandating the S.C. State Ethics Commission accept only online filing for SEI forms. Lawmakers neglected to update a related candidate filing law that requires candidates to bring a paper copy of their SEI form from the Ethics Commission when filing to run as a candidate. Incumbents receive a "public official exemption" to that requirement under the assumption that since they already hold the office for which they are running a current SEI would already be on file.