Officials set to start Collins' petition check

SUMMERVILLE — Dorchester County election officials expect to start checking the signatures Tuesday for Bill Collins to get in the state Senate race against Mike Rose.

Rose, an attorney and former senator, beat Sen. Randy Scott in the Republican District 38 primary last month. Scott was charged with drunken driving as the campaign began, though the charge was dropped.

The election commission has until Aug. 15 to validate the signatures. Collins needed to turn in 3,155 signatures of registered voters by July 15 to get on the ballot as an independent. He said he collected 4,696.

Now the county election commission has to go through the petitions and match names with voting records to see how many are valid.

Kathy Worthington, deputy director of elections for the county, said she's unsure how long it will take. Collins said he's optimistic the process won't take long. He and Rose said they expect to be at election headquarters doing their own checks.

Three people will operate computers and three will pull records, Worthington said. They have to match signatures and records for the first 500 signatures, then every 10th one after that. More than 750 signatures must be checked.

Election officials want to finish validating the signatures for school board candidates before tackling Collins' petition. Worthington said she expects to validate the school board candidates Monday and start on Collins' list Tuesday morning.

Collins, retired publisher of the Summerville Journal-Scene, said people called him after Rose won, saying they wanted another choice. Collins then started collecting signatures to get on the ballot as an independent. He said he would become a Republican after the election.

The petition drive became a media event when Rose said Collins was opening up people to identity theft by asking for their Social Security numbers on the petitions. Collins said he started scratching out the numbers after the dispute, even though they're standard on petitions from the election commission. They're not required but can help election officials match up signatures and records.

Worthington said she hopes that not having the Social Security numbers doesn't slow up the process, especially when signatures are hard to read.