SC judge orders candidate Danny Lee Ford II kept on Senate primary ballot.

What this episode covers

Charlie James: Welcome to the program on your Friday afternoon, the last day of July, ladies and gentlemen. August joins us tomorrow, so it’s been a good month. Thank you very much, July. We appreciate it. Can’t wait to get into the fall months right now, though. I know I’m getting a little tired of all this hot weather. But it’s heating up now. We’ve got 95 days until the midterms, five days until early voting starts here in South Carolina for the Senate race. Now, got to—I want to give you this information now because I want to make sure everybody knows about this, so I will repeat this several times between now and then. Early voting, three days only: August 5th, 6th, and 7th. The voting hours are from 8:30 to 5:30. That is early voting only—8:30 until 5:30. Your voting place is going to depend on which county you’re in. All right? Today is the last day to apply for an absentee ballot in this race. All right, let me repeat that: today is the last day to apply for an absentee ballot in this upcoming special primary for Senate here in South Carolina. So again, we’ve got early voting, then we’ve got the primary on August the 11th—that’s Tuesday the 11th. Those hours are going to be 7 in the morning to 7 at night, 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM. Then if it goes to a runoff, the special—or the early voting for the runoff will be August 19th, 20th, and 21st, 8:30 AM to 5:00 PM for early voting. Then we’ll have the runoff day-of, August the 25th. Those hours are going to be from 7:00 until 7:00. Please check your voting location. Now, remember school is starting that week. Lots of schools, you know, they usually have some of these polling places in their gyms. They’re not going to be doing that. So go online to scvotes.gov—that’s scvotes.gov—and find out exactly where you are going to be voting. Now, things just got a little weird in the race. Remember everybody was wondering if Darlene Graham had even qualified for this race? And what did I tell you? I said, if she does not qualify because of her voting record, this is going to go to court. Did I not say that? Yes. Well, it wasn’t her! It was someone else! Danny Lee Ford II. We heard just a few days ago that he was declared ineligible. Well, let me tell you what he said about this. Where is it? Where is it, where is it? He said that he was notified by the SCGOP that he is not eligible due to not meeting the qualifications based on GOP Rule 11.6(a). Okay. Now, in case you’re wondering what that is: a few weeks ago, Drew McKissick reconvened the South Carolina GOP convention. All of these executive committeemen from all over the state, they went to Columbia and they voted on these rules changes. And one of the rules changes was: you could not be a candidate unless you had voted in two out of the last three primary elections. Now, if you didn’t meet that qualification, you could get a special waiver from the State Executive Committee, or if it were a county seat, you could get a waiver from the county’s EC. Okay. All right. So, Danny Lee Ford got notified that he was not eligible, and he said, "Well, I’ll fix your little red wagon." He took it to court. And now a South Carolina judge has ordered state election officials to keep a candidate’s name on the upcoming U.S. Senate special primary ballot after he was left off the list. Now, wait a minute, hold on. This potentially could not only affect Danny Ford; it could also affect Darius Mitchell, who also did not meet the voting criteria. Now, I don’t know what he’s going to do about Clark Gilleson—this is the guy that lives up in Charlotte, so he doesn’t even live here in South Carolina, but he has every intention of moving here—but still. So not only did you have Danny Lee Ford, you had Darius Mitchell that were so-called disqualified because of their voting records. So now, restraining orders have been put out on that. After the filing, Judge Daniel M. Koble granted an emergency temporary restraining order. The order blocks both ...

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