Gloria Bromell Tinubu defeated Preston Brittain in the runoff election for the 7th Congressional District democratic nomination Tuesday night, just days after 15th Circuit Judge Larry Hyman ruled there would be a runoff.
On primary election night, the South Carolina Election Commission declared Tinubu the outright winner of the Democratic primary for the newly formed seat.
Preston Brittain finished second, and his supporters filed a lawsuit hoping to get a runoff.
The argument stemmed from some 2,300 votes cast for Ted Vick, who withdrew from the primary race after being arrested for DUI. His name remained on the ballot because it happened close to election day.
The SEC's decision to not count Vick's votes was done so because of a long-standing policy that votes for withdrawn candidates are not counted for the purpose of determining a majority vote in a primary. The SEC says, "This policy was based primarily on the plain language of the applicable state law (S.C. Code of Laws §7-17-610), which says that majority is determined "by dividing the total vote cast for all candidates by two," and that anything in excess of that sum is a majority."
Tinubu will take on the winner of the Republican primary runoff, Tom Rice, in the November general election.
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