Chaos in South Carolina: High court orders up to 100 candidates off ballot

These darned ethics laws are tripping up everyone. From Adam Beam of The State newspaper in Columbia, S.C.:

The state Supreme Court Wednesday ordered S.C. political parties to remove up to 100 candidates from their June 12 primary ballots, sending candidates and voters into a tailspin in an election year already fraught with confusion.

Any candidate who did not file a statement of economic interest — listing income, property and other financial information — at the same time they officially filed for office must be removed from the ballot, the court ruled in a unanimous decision. The ruling does not affect incumbents seeking re-election or officeholders seeking another office, because they already had economic-interest statements on file.

The deadline to file to run was March 30.

The decision affects largely those challenging incumbents, although at least one state House seat — a Democratic one — now has no qualified candidate.

- By Jim Galloway, Political Insider

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