A bill aimed at getting the South Carolina Republican Party to pay the rest of the cost of the presidential primary got voted down Thursday in a state Senate subcommittee.
The state is already paying part of the cost of the primary, while the filing fees the party charged the Republican presidential candidates will also pay for part. But State Election Commission director Marci Andino says the primary cost an estimated $500,000 more than that.
Four counties--Greenville, Spartanburg, Chester and Beaufort--sued the state and the GOP last year, saying state lawmakers couldn't force county taxpayers to pay for a private election. But the state Supreme Court ruled 3-2 that the counties did have to carry out the primary.
Sen. Shane Massey, R-Edgefield, sponsored a joint resolution that gave the Election Commission the authority to accept money from the Republican Party to pay for the rest of the costs.
"One of the legal interpretations of the Supreme Court opinion is that the commission is not entitled to receive these funds, or even if they did they couldn't spend them because we haven't authorized it. So what I'm trying to do is to get rid of that hurdle," he says.
But his resolution failed to pass out of subcommittee. Sen Ray Cleary, R-Georgetown, voted against it. "My opinion is that state government should be handling these presidential primaries and it shouldn't be on the backs of political parties," he said before voting it down.
But the fact that the resolution failed does not mean that county taxpayers will still have to pay the bill for the primary. Andino says her agency will use money set aside for the state primaries in June to help pay for the Republican presidential primary.
"We're going to reimburse counties at the same level that we did in 2008 when they conducted the presidential preference primaries," she told News13 after the subcommittee meeting.
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