Defeated Horry County Council candidate challenging outcome, blames absentee ballot glitch

Former Horry County Council chairman Mark Lazarus has called for a delay in certifying results of a June 28 GOP runoff that saw him losing to incumbent Johnny Gardner, blaming election officials for mistakenly sending more than 1,000 Democratic ballots to eligible Republican voters.

Lazarus, who led the council from 2013 to 2018 before losing to Gardner, was narrowly defeated in the competitive runoff, falling 260 votes short.

But days before the race, 1,377 Republican voters were mistakenly sent Democratic ballots due to what county election officials said in a June 24 statement was due to an “error in the ballot printing and mailing process” from West Columbia-based Sun Solutions.

On Thursday, Lazarus will ask the Horry County GOP to schedule a new election, he told The Sun News.

“A lot of people didn’t have the opportunity to have their voice heard,” he said, expanding on a lengthy statement posted to his campaign Facebook page on July 4.

Gardner took 50.6% of the June 28 vote to Lazarus’s 49.4%, enough to avoid an automatic recount. In 2018, Gardner beat Lazarus by 111 votes, a margin small enough to trigger a recount.

“If anyone had any doubts that election integrity was not an issue in this country, what happened here in Horry County is a perfect example of what Donald Trump warned us about,” Lazarus said on Facebook page. “Not only am I fighting for the disenfranchised voters in this election, but I will also fight to make sure what happened in this race does not ever occur again in future elections.”

Days after the June 28 contest, Lazarus unsuccessfully petitioned the county’s Voter and Elections Board to hold off on certifying the race until all absentee ballots could be counted.

Gardner could not immediately be reached for comment.

He’s now asking the powerful Horry County GOP to step in, planning next week to appeal his case. Chairman Roger Slagle did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“My objective isn’t personal, and this may or may not prove determinative,” Lazarus said of the mailing glitch. “The goal is to ensure that the ballot of every voter who intended to vote absentee is counted. This mistake must be fixed, now.”