S.C. High Court to Hear City Council Election Challenge Oct. 14

Greg Wilson/Anderson Observer

Though elections were held in April, Anderson City Council has been one member short for months due to an election challenge now scheduled to be heard by the South Carolina Supreme Court in October.

On Oct. 14, at 11:30 a.m., the court will hear arguments in Tonya Winbush v. City of Anderson, Anderson Municipal Election Commission, its commissioners and Darryl Thompson. The case will determine whether Winbush’s apparent victory in the April 7 City Council election should be restored, whether a new election should be held, or whether the commission’s decision to invalidate the result will stand.

The case has lasted longer than almost anyone involved expected. Meanwhile, thought Seat 5 has had no individual council representative, city officials have said the district is being temporarily represented by Anderson’s two at-large council members.

The dispute is about residency and what it constituted, and the weight of documents and the question of whether a candidate who won at the ballot box is legally eligible to hold the office.

Winbush maintains that she was elected by voters in the April 7 election over Darryl Thompson by roughly a two-to-one margin.

Thompson is the son of Beatrice Thompson, the retired longtime councilwoman whose former seat became the focus of the contest, two days after the election challenged Winbush’s residency qualifications for Seat 5.

The Anderson Municipal Election Commission considered the challenge and, on April 17, voted to invalidate Winbush’s election, concluding that she had not abandoned her residence at 741 Kings Road, outside the district, despite her claim that she lived at 309 Morris Lane within Seat 5.

The commission relied on what might be described as the bureaucratic evidence of residence: a deed, Anderson County auditor records, vehicle registrations, utility records and a driver’s license listing the Kings Road address.

Winbush, in turn, pointed to a lease and a water-service application connected to the Morris Lane property.

The conflict is familiar to anyone who has ever tried to establish residence for a school district, a tax bill, a voter-registration form or a driver’s license. A person may live in one place, receive mail in another, own property elsewhere and still leave behind a paper trail that tells a different story. The law, however, must eventually decide which set of facts carries the most weight.

Winbush appealed the municipal commission’s decision to Circuit Court. After a hearing, the court affirmed the commission in a brief order issued July 7.

She then appealed to the South Carolina Supreme Court, asking that the case be expedited. Her attorney, Christopher P. Kenney of Columbia, argued that Seat 5 had been left without direct representation and asked the court to use a fast briefing schedule similar to those employed in an earlier election disputes.

Nearly three months later, the matter is scheduled for oral argument.

Winbush is represented by Kenney. The City of Anderson, the Anderson Municipal Election Commission and commissioners David Ford, Clara E. Humphrey and Renee Fields-York are represented by Robert E. Tyson Jr., La’Jessica M. Stringfellow and Sarah Cameron Frierson of Robinson Gray Stepp & Laffitte in Columbia, along with Rame Lambert Campbell and J. Franklin McClain of the Anderson City Attorney’s Office. Thompson is representing himself.

The court’s case listing identifies Winbush as the appellant and the city, election commission, commissioners and Thompson as respondents.

The Supreme Court is not being asked merely to settle an argument over one April election, the decision will determine whether Winbush may take the Seat 5 office voters chose her to hold, whether the election must be conducted again, or whether the seat will remain vacant until the city proceeds under the result already upheld by Circuit Court.

The Election Commission’s conclusion rested on its finding that Winbush had not abandoned Kings Road as her residence, a phrase that can be deceptive. It does not mean simply staying somewhere else for a time, it asks whether a person has truly left one legal home and established another.

For Winbush, the answer lies at 309 Morris Lane, where she cited a lease and a water-service application. For the commission, the answer lay in the accumulation of records associated with 741 Kings Road, including ownership documents, tax records, vehicle paperwork, utility records and her driver’s license.

Those documents form the case’s central tension.

The justices will have to consider not merely which document matters most, but how the law weighs such evidence in deciding where a candidate is domiciled for purposes of municipal office.

The decision will be watched closely in Anderson because the facts are local, but the implications could extend beyond one ward. Residency disputes occur whenever elected offices are tied to districts, and the case could clarify how South Carolina election authorities should assess competing evidence of a candidate’s home.

For Seat 5 residents, the case has created an extended interval between casting a ballot and knowing who will represent them.

Winbush says the voters made their choice on April 7. The Municipal Election Commission ruled 10 days later that the choice could not stand. The Circuit Court agreed in July. The Supreme Court hearing in October now represents the final and most consequential stage in the dispute.

City Council has continued to operate. The two at-large council members have been described by the city as temporarily serving the Seat 5 area along with their citywide responsibilities. But district representation has an intimacy that at-large service cannot entirely replicate. A council seat is not only a vote at meetings; it is the person residents call about a zoning issue, a road problem, a neighborhood dispute or a question that does not fit neatly into the machinery of city government.

The Oct. 14 argument will take place in Columbia, but its subject remains a pair of addresses in Anderson and an election whose meaning has been unsettled since spring.

By the time the justices hear the case, more than six months will have passed since the votes were counted. One candidate will arrive seeking restoration of a victory; another will defend the challenge that overturned it; the city and its election commission will defend the process they followed.

At the center of it all is an empty chair — and the unanswered question of who should occupy it.