South Carolina: State poised to end ban on Election Day liquor sales | USAToday

Win or lose, South Carolina candidates running for office this year may be able to do something that their brethren in most other states are  already able to do: Buy an alcoholic beverage on Election Day. South Carolina is poised to repeal its ban on liquor sales on statewide election days following the state Senate’s approval Wednesday.  The Palmetto State is the last with a statewide Election Day ban on liquor sales, according to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States.

South Carolina: Elections oversight begins in fall, as reform passes | The State

Starting this fall, state elections officials will check vote totals in all 46 counties as part of the biggest election reform measure passed in a decade. Disagreements are brewing, meanwhile, among Richland County legislators about whether to retain two long-time election board members when the offices join once again as a result of the new measure. The bill – awaiting the governor’s signature after unanimous approval this week by the House and Senate – requires counties to merge election and voter registration functions. The measure averted possible chaos during upcoming elections in June and November: A lawsuit in Richland County foreshadowed problems with the patchwork of local laws that set up election boards statewide. The General Assembly had to agree on a uniform method to run county election offices.

South Carolina: Potential election law fix returned to Senate | Associated Press

The House has taken a new approach to passing a bill designed to prevent South Carolina’s elections from being thrown into chaos again. The proposal sent Friday to the Senate would both create a statewide model for county election boards, to hopefully remove the threat of chaos, and give the State Election Commission oversight over those 46 boards. That new authority could improve elections and ensure everyone’s vote is counted, state elections spokesman Chris Whitmire said Friday. Currently, if a county isn’t following the law or voluntarily complying with policy, the agency can only inform local officials and legislators of a potential problem. “They are their own entity. We can’t compel them to do anything,” Whitmire said. A panel of House and Senate members had been working on a compromise over different versions of a bill on the governance of county election boards. But that tentative compromise required a two-thirds vote in each chamber, a difficult proposition in the Senate. So the House instead attached the compromise to a separate election-related bill and, after a unanimous vote Thursday, returned that amended measure to the Senate. A simple majority approval in that chamber would send it to the governor’s desk.

South Carolina: Richland County elections officials, pollworkers say they’re ready for June 10 primaries | The State

The addition of precincts, equipment and pollworkers should add up to trouble-free June 10 primaries in Richland County, election officials say. “I feel good. I think it’s going to run well,” said Patrick Nolan, a retired USC professor who runs a Forest Acres precinct. He concurred with the assessment of fellow pollworkers that they are well-prepared for voting in two weeks. Officials at the elections office – still smarting from the fiasco of November 2012, when voters were outraged by long lines, misplaced ballots and a lack of accountability – say they’ve put new safeguards in place. “We have just buckled down and tried to look back – 2012, 2013 – and tried to find those things that did not play so well,” said Samuel Selph, who became Richland County’s interim elections director in February. “So what we’re doing is trying not to repeat the past.”

South Carolina: Officials changing gears to advance elections board bill | The State

Legislators are shifting strategies to finish work on a bill to unify how county election boards are set up. Sen. Chip Campsen said proponents are looking ahead to Wednesday for a House vote on a bill giving state election officials authority to perform county functions in some cases. Campsen was one of six legislators on a conference committee that, he said, has informally agreed on new wording on a bill addressing the patchwork of boards that manage elections across 46 S.C. counties. But instead of working through the conference committee, Campsen said, legislators will consider amendments to a similar bill now awaiting action in the House.

South Carolina: Richland County looks to avoid 2012 voter headache remake | WISTV

Samuel Selph, the interim director of the Richland County Elections Commission, says plenty of mistakes were made in 2012 and 2013 when it comes to voting in Richland County, and he says we can’t afford to make the same mistakes in the June 2014 primary less than 30 days away. That’s why the Richland County Election Commission has made big changes by adding 25 more precincts, including one at the southeast branch of the Richland County Library. The 25 extra precincts keep the number of voters at each polling place lower. In a statement, Selph says now there are only two precincts in Richland County with more than 3,000 voters.

South Carolina: Legislators working on election law fix | Associated Press

Both the House and Senate have passed a bill designed to prevent a lawsuit from throwing South Carolina’s elections into chaos again. But their versions differ. A six-member panel appointed this week will try to reach a compromise on the legislation, which is aimed at creating a statewide model for county election boards. Senate Judiciary Chairman Larry Martin has urged his colleagues to act quickly, noting a verdict on a lawsuit filed in March could jeopardize the June primaries. The South Carolina Public Interest Foundation has asked a judge to throw out a 2008 state law on how county election offices are constructed. Martin had warned such a lawsuit was likely, citing advice from the attorney general’s office that the law is unconstitutional. If a court affirms the top prosecutor’s opinion, there could be no one left locally to conduct elections, he said. Lawmakers also fear the potential of a verdict overturning upcoming elections. Legislators don’t want to take that chance two years after a lawsuit against a single candidate resulted in about 250 people being kicked off primary ballots statewide.

South Carolina: State lawmakers discuss changes to voter registration, election boards | GoUpstate.com

As state legislators struggle to unweave a tapestry of unconstitutional county voter registration and election boards, two-board systems in Spartanburg, Cherokee, Greenville and other counties could also be dissolved. Many of the boards most effected by legislation working its way through the state Senate have operated the same way since 1976 and carry out their duties and responsibilities well, said Sen. Shane Martin, R-Spartanburg. Martin objected to a bill that would create a statewide unified one-board per county system, but he and seven other senators were overruled, and the bill was placed on the Senate’s special order calendar. “I talked to the folks in Spartanburg, and they don’t want to change. And I talked to the folks in Greenville, and they don’t really want to change either,” Martin said. “I don’t want to subject my counties to making them jump through hoops to correct things other counties have done wrong.”

South Carolina: Lawmakers seek fix for election law to avoid ‘catastrophic’ problems | The Greenville News

State lawmakers are warning that another flawed election law could make the debacle of 2012 that knocked hundreds of candidates out of primaries seem tame by comparison. Sen. Larry Martin of Pickens, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told the Senate on Wednesday that the office of state Attorney General Alan Wilson has issued an opinion concluding that a 2008 law under which most of the state’s counties combined election and voter registration boards is unconstitutional. The reason, state Solicitor General Robert Cook explained in the opinion, is that under the state’s Constitution, the Legislature is prohibited from passing laws that are customized for certain parts of the state but not others. “Act No. 312 is simply an amalgam of laws, each for a particular county,” Cook wrote.

South Carolina: More election woes down the road, lawmakers warned | The State

State lawmakers are warning that another flawed election law could make the debacle of 2012 that knocked hundreds of candidates out of primaries seem tame by comparison. Sen. Larry Martin of Pickens, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told the Senate on Wednesday that the office of state Attorney General Alan Wilson has issued an opinion concluding that a 2008 law under which most of the state’s counties combined election and voter registration boards is unconstitutional. The reason, state Solicitor General Robert Cook explained in the opinion, is that under the state’s Constitution, the Legislature is prohibited from passing laws that are customized for certain parts of the state but not others. “Act No. 312 is simply an amalgam of laws, each for a particular county,” Cook wrote.

South Carolina: Bill clarifies that State Election Commission is responsible for presidential primaries | Associated Press

Taxpayers would continue to at least partly fund South Carolina’s first-in-the-South presidential primaries in the future under a bill backed by both major parties. The bill, which lawmakers advanced Monday to the full House Judiciary Committee, clarifies that the State Election Commission is responsible for conducting the contests. It does that by deleting from state law a reference to the 2008 election cycle. Rep. Alan Clemmons, the subcommittee’s chairman, said the bill means future presidential primaries will be funded through the budget like any other election, offset by filing fees that candidates pay.

South Carolina: Embattled Richland County elections director fired | The State

Howard Jackson has been fired after eight months as director of the Richland County Elections & Voter Registration Office. Jackson, 43, was dismissed Monday on a 4-1 vote by the election board, with member Adell Adams the only “no” vote. His last day in the office will be Feb. 28. “Things were not going right,” board member Samuel Selph said in confirming the board’s decision. Jackson, who was hired at an annual salary of $78,000, said he would be holding a news conference Tuesday to discuss the turn of events as well as recent elections. He was brought in by the board after the election disaster of November 2012, when too few machines were deployed and voters waited in long lines, some for as long as seven hours, to cast ballots. Then-director Lillian McBride, who oversaw that election, was demoted to another position.

South Carolina: Voting plan could put state ‘on thin ice’ | Gannett

South Carolina will be one misstep away from renewed federal supervision of its elections if legislation to restore part of the Voting Rights Act becomes law. The bill introduced Thursday would rewrite the rules that would determine which states need strict oversight based on the chance their election-related changes could harm minority voters. The old rules, which applied to South Carolina and all or part of 14 other states, were thrown out by the U.S. Supreme Court last year because they were based on outdated voting data.

South Carolina: Clemson program could bring online voting to South Carolina | The State

As the calendar rolls into 2014, the political season moves into hyper mode as state voters prepare to go to the polls to elect a governor and two U.S. senators and make other decisions in a mid-term election. Memories of long lines at the polls and questions about the state’s electronic voting machines are likely to recur. A Clemson University professor says he has some technological solutions to those problems. Juan Gilbert, chair of human-centered computing at Clemson, envisions a time when voters will be able to cast their ballots online without leaving home, and when each vote can be verified without relying solely on electronic data. …  The state spent more than $34 million for about 11,400 iVotrinic voting machines in 2004 and 2005, according to a report released last year by the state Legislative Audit Council. That’s about $3,000 per machine, compared to about $500 for an iPad.

South Carolina: Survey notes accessibility problems for Richland Co. voters with disabilities | The State

When Richland County voter Dori Tempio went to cast her ballot in November’s library referendum, a poll worker held the voting machine on her lap. She asked for privacy. He turned his head. “The person could see what I was voting,” said Tempio, 43, who uses a wheelchair. “Other people walking by could see what I was voting. … That makes you somewhat uncomfortable.” Tempio said she considers voting to be a sacred right; she has voted in every election since she turned 18. But a survey of Richland County precincts by Protection and Advocacy for People with Disabilities, Inc., found many residents with disabilities faced barriers when trying to exercise their right to vote Nov. 5. The survey identified a lack of accessible ballots as the top issue, affecting 63 percent of Richland County precincts.

South Carolina: State lawmakers eye changes to election oversight | Rock Hill Herald

Richland County’s state lawmakers have pre-filed legislation to shift oversight of elections to the counties that pay for them. The bills come as Richland County’s lawmakers work to address problems that led to the 2012 election debacle, where mismanagement and long lines at the polls produced one of the biggest voting disasters in state history. Now, Richland County’s legislative delegation names the board members who oversee elections and voter registration, said state Rep. James Smith, D-Richland, a sponsor of the legislation in the House. The counties that pay for elections should have that authority if they want it, he said. “The people of Richland County would be best served by a level of government that regularly meets and provides oversight and funding (of elections),” Smith said. “It’s a solid stab at good government, better government, to devolve these responsibilities to County Council,” he said.

South Carolina: Columbia Election Commission certifies strong-mayor results | Politics | The State

The Municipal Election Commission certified Thursday morning the results of the strong-mayor referendum – defeated Tuesday by voters – emphasizing that all votes had been counted. The commission wanted to make sure mistakes made in last month’s election were not repeated. Hundreds of absentee votes were missed in the Nov. 5 Columbia city races because a personal electronic ballot, which held the votes, was not read. During the certification Thursday at the county office, city Commissioner Jay Bender asked Howard Jackson, director of the Richland County elections office, if all of the votes had been counted and all of the electronic ballots had been read. Jackson said all had been counted and read and mentioned a precertification audit, which was done as a checks and balances measure to make sure no mistakes were made.

South Carolina: 1,114 Richland Coubty Votes Not Counted; What’s Done to Protect You | WSAV

The State Election Commission has discovered that the votes of 1,114 people in Richland County were not counted in the November 5 election. The results from one machine were overlooked in the vote count. The votes were from absentee voters who cast their ballots in person at the Richland County Elections and Registration Office. The votes would not have changed the outcome of any of the races or the ballot question if they had been counted. But it raises the question: What’s done to protect your vote and make sure it counts? Chris Whitmire, spokesman for the State Election Commission, says, “There’s no excuse for not counting any ballot and there are ample checks and balances in place that should prevent that from happening.” Richland County Elections director Howard Jackson says, “We had procedures in place and we just didn’t follow those procedures.” He says his office is taking steps to make sure it never happens again.

South Carolina: 1,114 Richland County ballots not counted | The State

A state election audit revealed Thursday that Richland County officials failed to count 1,114 absentee ballots when finalizing results of the Nov. 5 city and county elections. Howard Jackson, county election director, said the electronic ballots came from a single voting machine used by absentee voters at the election office. This was the first countywide election since Richland County’s botched 2012 general election, considered one of the worst in state history. At that time, precincts across the county did not have enough voting machines, leaving some voters in line for up to seven hours, and hundreds of ballots turned up uncounted days later.

South Carolina: Richland County buying 170 extra voting machines | The State

Richland County’s election director is creating a new position of voter-outreach coordinator as part of efforts to prepare for the June primary. Howard Jackson asked Richland County Council for money to buy 170 voting machines and associated equipment, enough to comply with state standards requiring one machine per 250 voters. But when it came to covering the new $42,500 position, the council balked, trimming Jackson’s out-of-cycle budget request to $615,622.56 – an amount approved Tuesday by unanimous vote. Jackson said he’ll find the money in the election office’s $1.2 million budget to fund the extra position he deems critical this year. … Rush also expressed concern that county voting machines, selected by the state and purchased in 2004, have become obsolete and will have to be replaced before long.

South Carolina: Could Open Primaries Close the Door on Graham in 2014? | State of Elections

A recent case out of South Carolina is drawing attention to the potential impact of open primaries on election results. South Carolina law does not require voters to formally register with a particular political party in order to cast a vote in a primary. A system in which voters can select the primary they wish to vote in regardless of party affiliation is called an open primary system.  Open primary systems sometimes draw criticism because they can allow voters to engage in so-called crossover voting.  Crossover voting occurs when members of one political party deliberately vote for a candidate they perceive to be weaker in an opposing party’s primary in order to give their candidate an advantage. It is important to note that voters in an open primary system do have to select only one primary in which to vote, so crossover voting naturally removes a voter’s opportunity to cast a ballot for the actual candidate of her choice in her own party’s primary.  Exit polls provide evidence that voters have crossed party lines during primaries in South Carolina. For example, despite South Carolina’s traditionally conservative electorate, nearly 30% of the voters in the Republican presidential primary in 2012 were either Democrats or Independents.  Further, nearly a quarter of the independents chose Ron Paul as their candidate of choice, rather than the eventual winner in the primary, Newt Gingrich.

South Carolina: Two Spartanburg County lawmakers to push bill to close primaries | GoUpstate.com

Two Spartanburg County legislators plan to pick up the fight for closed primaries when they reconvene with their colleagues in January. Rep. Bill Chumley, R-Woodruff, and Sen. Lee Bright, R-Roebuck, said they plan to pre-file legislation that would close the primaries. South Carolina voters would have to register by party and vote only in their own party’s primary. “I think Republican-minded people should choose our candidate and not have it part of a partisan strategy of who the other party would like to run against,” Chumley said. Such legislation has died in the Legislature before, but the lawmakers said they are undeterred and are optimistic this year could be different. “It’s something the party’s been pushing for a while,” Bright said. “I’m starting to hear it from people outside the establishment.”

South Carolina: Strong Mayor Vote Bumped to December | Free-Times.com

After more than three hours of debate and public comment at a special meeting Wednesday night, Columbia City Council voted 4-3 not to put a strong mayor referendum on the November ballot. Instead, they’ll hold a special election Dec. 3 — but only if and when they receive a certified petition from the Richland County Election Commission. Petition gatherers presented a petition calling for a referendum to the election commission last Tuesday, but the commission hasn’t yet certified it. Councilman Sam Davis was the swing vote last week to give initial approval to a November vote, but said he’d only give it final approval if the petition was certified.

South Carolina: Judge: Merger of Richland County election offices unconstitutional | The State

A SC circuit court judge issued a blunt ruling that the 2011 merger of Richland County’s elections and voter registration offices violates the state constitution. “The General Assembly has returned to its unconstitutional practice of enacting special and single county legislation,” Judge Thomas Cooper wrote in an order made public Thursday. “The Supreme Court has repeatedly found such actions of the General Assembly unconstitutional.” Observers said his ruling voids the 2011 law that reorganized separate county offices and ramped up spending in the year leading up to the November 2012 election, a presidential vote that turned out to be one of the biggest disasters in state history.

South Carolina: Richland County Elections Director Concerned About Voting Machine Storage | wltx.com

The new director of elections in Richland County has yet to case a vote, but says his storage space for voting machines could hurt his ability to do so. “The county has done a good job of repairing the warehouse, however, it still leaks. There’s still insulation hanging from the roof,” said Howard Jackson.  “So, it’s not very good working conditions.” Jackson spoke about the conditions during an elections board meeting Tuesday.  He said members of county council and the County Administrator have toured the warehouse recently. The board didn’t advertise the location of the warehouse, saying security there is cause for concern.

South Carolina: Four Pinocchios: The case of ‘zombie’ voters in South Carolina | The Washington Post

“We just recently learned that there are over 900 individuals who had died before the election (and had voted) and at least 600 of those individuals had died way outside the window that an absentee ballot could have been sent, so we know for a fact that there are deceased people whose identities are being used in elections in South Carolina.”— South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson (R), on Fox News, Jan. 21, 2012

“We found out that there were over 900 people who died and then subsequently voted. That number could be even higher than that.” — Wilson, on Fox News, Jan. 12, 2012

“Without Photo ID, let’s be clear, I don’t want dead people voting in the state of South Carolina.” — South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R), in an interview that aired on Fox News, April 21, 2012

We don’t normally delve into statements so long after they were made, but this is an unusual case, brought to our attention by a reader. Take a look at the rather definitive statements made by South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, such as “we know for a fact that there are deceased people whose identities are being used in elections in South Carolina.” This was a rather shocking claim, which stemmed from allegations made by Kevin Schwedo, executive director of the South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles. (“Well over 900 individuals appear to have voted after they died.”) One state lawmaker famously declared: “We must have certainty in South Carolina that zombies aren’t voting.”

South Carolina: Nikki Haley Takes Heat After Report Blows Up ‘Bogus’ Voter Fraud Claims | Huffington Post

For years, South Carolina Republicans have complained about the names of dead voters being used to cast ballots in a broad voter fraud scheme. Now that a recent report by the State Law Enforcement Division has blown up those claims, unable to find a single example of a “zombie voter” committing fraud, one Democrat is demanding that Gov. Nikki Haley (R) apologize for her party’s “bogus” crusade. In a statement released Monday, House Democratic Leader Todd Rutherford accused Haley and other Republicans of deliberately and deceptively pushing false claims for political gain. “Now we have the proof that shows that the accusations of voter fraud were completely without merit,” said Rutherford. “And once again, South Carolina’s taxpayers have to foot the bill for the millions of dollars unnecessarily spent as a result of Governor Haley and her colleagues’ incompetence and blind-ideology.”

South Carolina: No widespread voter fraud found in South Carolina elections | The Augusta Chronicle

No one intentionally cast a ballot in South Carolina using the names of dead people in recent elections, despite allegations to the contrary, according to a State Law Enforce­ment Division report. Attorney General Alan Wil­son asked the agency to investigate last year after the Department of Motor Vehi­cles determined in early 2012 that more than 900 people listed as deceased had voted in recent years. Wilson called the number “alarming” and said it “clearly necessitates an investigation into criminal activity.” State Election Commis­sion Director Marci Andino had her staff look at questionable votes from the Novem­ber 2010 general election, or about 200 of the more than 900 votes total – information that was also ultimately analyzed by SLED. Nearly half of the issues could be attributed to clerical errors, while several dozen resulted from DMV officials running Social Secur­ity numbers of voters against dead people but not seeing whether the names matched.

South Carolina: Richland County Council agrees to pay $100K in election-related lawyers’ fees | The State

RICHLAND COUNTY, SC — Richland County Council finally agreed Tuesday to pay more than $100,000 in bills for the lawyers who cleaned up the county’s November election mess. But not until after some unusual procedural moves, a change of heart by two members and the chairman’s threat to enforce a time limit for Councilman Bill Malinowski as he questioned charges for travel and telephone conversations. The council, which had put off the decision twice before, agreed to pay $72,423.10 for lawyer Steve Hamm to investigate Election Day problems and recommend how to fix them; $9,348.75 for lawyer John Nichols, who represented demoted elections director Lillian McBride; and $17,924.20 for Helen McFadden, who kept the election results from being overturned in court. “Who didn’t have a lawyer?” Councilman Greg Pearce muttered at one point.

South Carolina: Eight Months Later, Richland County Election Mess Explained – Kind of | Free Times

The man who taxpayers are paying more than $70,000 to investigate what caused Richland County’s election meltdown eight months ago explained his final findings to a nearly empty room last week. Attorney Steve Hamm presented his completed report to the county board of elections June 26. There were hardly any bombshells, nor members of the public there to hear them had they dropped. Perhaps the biggest news was that Hamm confirmed he’d alerted law enforcement to the actions of a male part-time elections agency employee he said had “sabotaged” the number of voting machines deployed to precincts, causing long lines and some voters to leave before casting ballots. The Nov. 6 county election was plagued by snarled lines, broken machines — too few of them — and ballots that were never even counted. Much of that can be attributed to the actions of one unnamed person, Hamm said, although he wagged a finger at the elections board and agency management for not catching the problems early. That one elections worker, Hamm found in his investigation, had coaxed another employee into writing down wrong numbers on a spreadsheet, drastically reducing the number of voting machines that would be allocated to Election Day precincts. Hamm said he doesn’t know why the unnamed man might have wanted to choke off the number of voting machines on Election Day. He said he wondered if law enforcement might be able to find out.