♪ Welcome to this week in South Carolina I'm Gavin Jackson.

This week we look at the upcoming June 11th primaries and the safety and security of our election system.

And to do that, I'm joined by Howard Knapp.

He's the executive director of the State Election Commission.

Howard, welcome.

>> Thank you for having me.

So, Howard, we have a lot to talk about in the next couple of minutes, but I want to ask you just to kind of break down how elections work in South Carolina.

A lot of folks, a lot of our viewers aren't originally from South Carolina.

They maybe moved here for the first time living here now, voting in their first elections.

We don't use the Secretary of State to oversee our elections.

Your commission, your office, and of course, county offices across the state do like.

So kind of break it down for us.

And, what's at play this year?

>> Sure.

So, yeah, South Carolina is a very unique state.

Very few states have a system like we do.

And you're correct.

45 ish states are, the chief election official of their state is their secretary of state and South Carolina, I'm the chief election official of the state.

And, we have a commission, a state commission, that heads our agency.

But we have 46 county boards of other registration and elections who actually conduct the elections in each state.

We're what is called in the election world, a top down state where the state does have supervisory authority, limited authority over the counties, and they have to follow state laws and agency policies and procedures, but they're the ones on the ground conducting elections.

>> You know, we can talk more about their authority and their powers in a minute.

But, just to cut to the chase, tell us about the elections in South Carolina.

Is there voter fraud or elections safe?

How do you verify all this?

>> So, election integrity, is a massive part, a massive focus of what we do at the State Election Commission.

The General Assembly made some sweeping changes in 2022 with Act 150 to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat.

We have a robust voter registration system whereby we collect data from government sources, mostly other state agencies, to keep our voter list as accurate as possible.

We have security partnerships with SLED (clears throat) Excuse me.

Homeland security, the FBI, others who monitor and help us secure our election systems in the state.

>> And now we have we have a paper trail too.

That was a recent development too.

You've been in the office for two years now, but that came right around the time you got there?

>> Well, yeah, I arrived about four and a half years ago, but I've been in my current role for two years.

So in 2018, when our new voting system was procured, it was first used at the tail end of 2019.

It is a paper based voting system.

So no matter what happens with any of the election equipment, we, at the very least, we have a paper ballot, which is the back up that shows this is how that voter voted.

>> And then you also conduct audits, hand count audits too.

>> Yes.

So one of the first things I did as director was stand up a new division of audit.

We conduct two kinds of audits.

We conduct post-election audits, which is really the audits that most people hear about on the news that verify the results of the system, match hand-count audits, where we select precincts and offices for the counties to go through the paper ballots to ensure that the, the paper hand-count matches what the system says.

And we also conduct the county Office of Compliance reviews, much like other state entities that do compliance reviews, just to ensure that county offices are following state law.

>> And everything's up to snuff, right?

I mean, everything matches up.

There's never been any issues, never been widespread voter fraud.

>> No, there has not.

There's never been any widespread voter fraud since I've been at the SEC, since I've lived in South Carolina.

But all of our audits, reports, are on our website for public view.

Gavin> scvotes.gov.

Legislative Audit Council, which is like our investigative arm of the state, reviewed the state's election process and found that some individuals may have violated the law, for example, there is about 3.7 million registered voters at the time of this audit.

And three ballots were cast between 2022 and 2023 under a dead registered voters name.

You hear about that happening from time to time.

and there are also more than 1500 dead individuals on the rolls as of last year.

Ten inmates voted in elections between 2010 and 2021 while incarcerated.

So, still behind bars.

But some 20, some 212 offenders on parole also voted.

So obviously some small issues.

How does that stack up and what do you say to those numbers?

>> So with the dead voters, the three dead voters, and we, this happens every general election.

People do vote absentee and then pass away before Election Day.

And that's what happened in those three instances.

That happened in 2020, almost the exact same number.

A few voters, unfortunately, or fortunately they voted absentee and unfortunately passed away before Election Day.

When it comes to, and I tell all the groups I speak to about this, our voter list is only as accurate as the information we receive.

And so we receive conviction data from the court system and law enforcement and other entities like that.

So when we have incarcerated people who, who are voting, who should not be, and we verified, we never were notified that they were incarcerated.

So there needs to be work statewide on what our list maintenance in terms of just how agencies collect data about their, you know, their different concerns.

I don't know if there's miscommunication between certain agencies about who's incarcerated, who's not.

But our list is only as accurate as the data we receive.

>> And there's been even some, some pressure nationwide when it comes to these lists when it comes to the database, ERIC, that helps reconcile a lot of these differences nationwide.

>> Yes.

A lot of states have left ERIC.

We're still part of it.

We pay dues to so you can get the most up to date information, correct?

>> Correct.

So, ERIC is a consortium of states.

It used to be much bigger.

South Carolina and Georgia are the only two Southern states that remain.

It's biggest tool for us.

It provides data that we can't get from anywhere else.

So if a South Carolinian moves to one of the other member states that state notifies us.

You know, if I were to move from here to Ohio, one of my first items of business is not going to be to cancel my voter registration in South Carolina.

I've got a whole life to set up in my new state.

Well, when I go to my DMV in Ohio, that information gets sent to the Ohio Secretary of State's office, who used to be a member of ERIC.

And then it would have been sent to South Carolina.

So that that's one report we get is moves from people from South Carolina to another state.

We also get, it's an unfortunate name, but it's the name, the Master Death File from the Social Security Administration.

If somebody passes away and Social Security knows about it, we get that information through ERIC.

Social security sends that data as a, as a master file to ERIC, and ERIC sends that to all the member states.

So we get lots of data from ERIC.

I know that there are many states that don't believe I'm trying to, as is with some other secretaries, reform some of the processes that ERIC uses.

But, I have full confidence in ERIC's security.

I have full confidence in the mission of ERIC, and I will remain in ERIC, I will keep South Carolina in ERIC for as long as I think it serves the people of the state.

>> When we talk about the roles that we have here in South Carolina, how often do you all go through those to see who's active, who's inactive, and then clean those up?

Because that's always a bit of a controversy, too.

>> Sure.

So, every two years we send out a mailing to people who have not voted in the last four years.

So you can be made inactive if you don't vote every four years.

That's, that's not a big deal, because if you haven't voted in a while and you've been inactive when you go to vote, you can be very quickly reactivated.

But yeah, that's, that's one, one thing we do.

If you're sent election mail throughout the year and it's sent back to the Election, your county Election office will make you inactive for having moved or returned mail.

So there are.

How often do we do this?

It's anywhere from monthly to every two years.

We do some kind of process to ensure our list is as accurate as possible.

>> Yeah.

Again, just accuracy, integrity and safety.

So, and again no, no problems all around.

Just trying to deal with all the all the bureaucracy that comes with it, it sounds like.

But also there's been a lot of external pressure, political pressure on your office too.

Recently, y'all had to deal with some sort of issue with voter registration forms that have been mailed out by other agencies to immigrants and asylum seekers who are residing in the state who are receiving federal benefits.

By law, they're required to get information about registering to vote, just like anyone who receives the benefits.

So but this became a huge deal with Greenville Republican Representative Adam Morgan, who is running for Congress, who's over the House Freedom Caucus suggesting that non-U.S. citizens are doing something illegal.

State Law Enforcement Division said that that's not the case.

They investigated it.

But on the flip side, y'all have been receiving a lot of heat from this, even death threats to your office.

Kind of clarify for us what that's about, what's going on when it comes to non-U.S. citizens and how they're not able to vote.

>> So, yeah, I understand the concerns that were raised and have been raised by people across the country.

So the Help America Vote Act requires that any government entity that services clients like Medicaid or, you know, any, anything like that, they have to provide that, that person with an opportunity to register to vote.

That's just, that's federal law.

In that instance, Health and Human Services, they have a packet for all new clients and included a form that said, would you like to register to vote?

It was not a voter registration form, it was just a declination form.

And it said on the form, if you're not a US citizen, don't fill this out.

And I don't know all the details of how that went down, but I can assure you we do not register non-citizens in South Carolina to vote.

>> What was it like in your office after all this kind of came out?

>> So when this, when Representative Morgan's tweet came out, we started receiving harassing calls.

and then we got some death threats from people from out of state, actually.

But my staff and myself were coming to work and having people call and say pretty horrid things without knowing what was going on.

And it really impacted my staff, and what's important, what's most important to me is that my staff can come to the office and feel that they're safe and secure, because they serve the citizens of the state.

And when they come to work afraid for their lives, that's not a good thing.

>> How frustrating is it for you and your staff to hear, you know, folks say there's rampant fraud, there's inaccuracies, there's all these issues.

I mean, y'all are just doing your jobs and you're just bombarded by, not even facts, but conspiracy theories.

It's, it's, it's incredibly frustrating.

And this, we have been fighting, I tell people the 2020 election has never ended for a lot of us who have been in it, who are still in it, since then.

There are a lot of conspiracy theories about elections stemming from the 2020 election through today.

And, all of them unfounded, all of them unproven.

And what's frustrating to us is we come to work every day, we are voters, too.

And that's why I tell people I'm a South Carolinian.

I'm a South Carolina voter.

My staff are all South Carolina voters.

We want the system to be as secure and as accessible as it can be for all of our citizens who vote.

If anybody wants the system to be as perfect as it can be, it's me.

And for people to think that my staff or I or my commission are acting in bad faith in any way, it's, it's a slap in the face to the people who come to work for the people that are upset.

>> And it's been repeatedly investigated and shown that there's nothing to it.

SLED, SEC I mean, any number of entities could investigate you to try and find something, but there's nothing to find out.

>> Yes, we have been investigated by every audit or or law enforcement agency in the state on all of those claims.

And every single audit or investigation has proven that it's unfounded.

>> And just kind of wrapping up here, Howard, I want to ask you just about what it looks like at the local level because like we talked about earlier, you all around the state, there's 4 or 6 counties.

Each county has its own election office.

you're looking to get a little bit more control over those offices because right now it's, it's a little haphazard in some ways.

And you might see maybe more standardization of what's happening at the local level.

>> So part of that X150 was to reiterate to the counties, standardize policies and procedures.

In fact, there were several sentences written in that bill, now law, that say counties have to follow federal law, state law, and agency policies and procedures.

This was a big part of former Speaker Jay Lucas's agenda when he was in office towards the end of his term.

He wanted standardization, and I agreed with him.

He wanted all candidates and voters to be treated the same from Greenville to Charleston, and that's still my mission.

What's frustrating is voters, if they know about the State Election Commission, something happens in their local office or at their local polling place, and they get really mad about it.

So they call the state thinking we have control over it.

We don't.

I have members of the General Assembly who want me to help step in and do something about a situation that occurs in the county.

I can't do that.

I don't have the authority to do it.

And, I'm not seeking more authority necessarily.

But I'm telling the General Assembly, if you want things to change and you want more accountability, you have to be the ones to do it.

>> Yeah, and just with a couple seconds left here, Howard, we have the June 11th primaries coming up.

What's it looking like so far in terms of early voting?

>> Sure.

So about 69,000 voters have voted early so far.

We, there are approximately 3.3 million voters in the state.

We're expecting good turnout, especially in certain congressional districts where there's a primary.

We're expecting a good turnout.

November is going to have much higher turnout than, than the statewide primaries.

But we encourage people to prep for the polls by going on to our website, scvotes.gov to check their voter registration and they can see their sample ballot because we have people call the office who want to know who am I voting for?

Look at your sample ballot, do your research.

You can bring your sample ballot to the polling place, if you want, and vote.

So prep for the polls.

>> Gotcha.

A lot to look forward to.

That's Howard Knapp, State Election Commission director.

Thanks again.

>> Thank you.

Joining me now is South Carolina Public Radio's Maayan Schechter, to give us a recap of what happened at the statehouse this week and a preview of the June 11th primaries.

Maayan, welcome back.

>> Thanks so much for having me, Gavin.

>> So, Maayan, tell us about what happened at the statehouse this week.

Obviously, lawmakers have been out of session for about a month now.

They adjourned sine die, May 9th.

The two year session is over, but there are still some things that had to be done.

>> The big thing yesterday, Wednesday, was the election to the state Supreme Court.

The legislature, by a unanimous 152 to 0 vote, elected, now, Justice elect, Leticia Verdin, a 53 year old from Greenville.

She currently sits on the state's Court of Appeals, but she will join the court officially in August.

That is when, of course, Chief Justice Donald Beatty will be retiring.

And then now Associate Justice John Kittredge will move up into his seat as chief justice.

But what the election means yesterday is that, for, it ends, it ends this month long, terrible headlines or embarrassing headlines for the state of having the only all male state Supreme Court in the country.

So now one woman will be on the state Supreme court, will be the third woman to have sat on the state Supreme Court following Kaye Hearn and Jean Toal, of course, but it does mean that South Carolina will not have a Black justice for about the first time in nearly two decades, joining about 18 other states that do not have a justice of color, and about 25 other states that do not have a Black justice.

But yesterday, reporters were able to catch Justice elect Verdin in the lobby.

I think we surprised her a little bit to ask her what she was feeling, given the fact that this is a bit of a historic moment due to the fact that we have had an all male Supreme Court and that she is the third woman.

She said she was very honored to have been elected by the legislature.

She said that she hopes the public knows that she is a fair justice, and also that she cares about all South Carolinians.

>> Yeah.

It's always good to get those justices when you can because they kind of get tight lipped when they're on the bench, and we have to catch them before and after they're on the bench to get their thoughts.

>> Right.

We couldn't ask her exactly how she would rule on future, future cases, and she made sure to remind us that she couldn't answer all of our questions.

So we kept it pretty, pretty diplomatic yesterday.

>> Yeah.

And that was kind of the bow on top of this whole year at the statehouse, when we're talking about judicial merit selection reform, we're talking about judicial reform, and just a lot of that's still progressing.

Haven't really finished all that yet, reforms to that system and how she was chosen.

But I guess this is maybe a good way to diffuse, like you're saying, a lot of those bad headlines we've been seeing.

>> Probably.

I think our focus right now is on the primary election.

So the members who are sitting on this conference committee in both the House and the Senate are probably very focused on that.

That is going to be one of the issues that perhaps they tackle after the primary.

But we asked lawmakers yesterday, what's the, what's, what's going on with this JMSC conference committee?

Where, where do the negotiations stand?

And we did not get a clear answer.

So it's really unclear as of this point when they do meet after the primary or if they will meet.

>> That primary, June 11th.

And of course, a lot will happen after that because a lot still needs to happen, including the budget.

We did see the Budget conference committee meet this week.

Three House, three Senate lawmakers hashing out their differences between their two versions of the budget.

Luckily, there's plenty of money for them to deal with, so it doesn't seem like it's too, too controversial at this point.

But we do need a budget by July 1st.

Any word on where that's going?

>> So, about an hour or two after the election of the state Supreme Court justice, the conference committee did meet, mostly to negotiate the the provisos, or those one year laws that are attached to the budget that they could all agree on.

They set June 12th, the day after the primary, as a day to potentially come back.

You know, a lot of these conversations about the budget are not happening out in public.

They're happening behind closed doors.

And as far as drama, like we saw last year, I think it's still very early.

I know it's June and the budget starts July, and so it needs to get done, but there's probably plenty of time for them for there to be some dust ups.

And again, they haven't gotten to some of the very controversial points yet, publicly.

So I think there's still time to, to have a little bit of drama.

Or maybe this is a drama free budget negotiation year.

Gavin> (chuckles) That would be nice.

We've seen some compromise and some agreement on some things too, when it comes to pay raises for teachers and such.

So we're still waiting to see that.

And of course later this month we'll be back to to deal with all that.

But of course, the big deal this month is the primary election on June 11th.

We're talking about all 184 House members and 46 state Senate members up for reelection this November, but before that, we need to see who's gonna be on the ballot.

That's what the primaries are for.

Some seats are wide open, others are shooting their shot for higher office or the state Senate or congressional races.

But let's start with the House, where there are 184 members, 88 Republicans, 36 Democrats.

We've already gone through an election in the House with this new map that's on the books that was redrawn after the 2020 census.

So not all House seats are competitive.

In fact, just a handful really ever become really competitive in the fall.

But the primary is when we see a lot of that battling out to see who's going to be what on the ballot this fall.

So what what are you watching here?

What's the big themes coming up for June 11th?

>> I think I'm watching.

I think you're watching.

I think anybody who's paid any attention to the statehouse over the last couple of years is watching what happens between the members of the House GOP caucus, which is more established caucus, and then the 16,17 members of the House Freedom Caucus.

And, of course, as background, as you, you'll recall, members of the House Freedom Caucus, I think, with the exception of perhaps one, are not members of the House GOP caucus because they declined to sign a set of rules that they considered loyalty oaths.

And after that, I mean, basically put a target on their back.

And over the course of the last several months, we've seen issues on the House floor.

We've seen this issue that just came up on sine die with a health bill that has placed more targets on their back.

So it'll be interesting to see what happens, whether the House Republican Caucus and their aligned challengers to the House Freedom Caucus can pull out a win.

You know, I think if the House GOP Caucus maybe, perhaps loses a seat or two, but does wind up winning these other seats against Freedom Caucus members, they will see that as a win.

The House Freedom Caucus on the other side, really, probably, they're, they're around 16 or 17 members.

I think if they can get back to the 20 members or so that they had at the beginning, they will see that as a success.

But really, this is kind of, while, you know, I don't know if everyone expects the House Freedom Caucus to to grow exponentially.

This is, this is really sort of the fight that we've all been waiting for.

This is really the last two years culminating to this moment.

And it will, you know, to see what happens in the House moving forward.

>> Yeah.

And that affects, you know, people are probably like, okay, great, politics, whatever, but how does that affect me?

But it does, because we're talking about possibly things becoming more conservative, not only in the House but also in the Senate, where a couple votes have really made the difference when it comes to major legislation, too.

So, but it was even interesting to see the Post and Courier editorial board came out and said, in an unprecedented move, they came out against all the House Freedom Caucus members saying, quote, the House Freedom Caucus is unlike anything we've encountered before, and it has, has forced us to write this unprecedented, unprecedented anti endorsement.

So you're seeing them come out full force.

So it is going to be kind of a make or break moment, it seems like, for that group, especially when you have the House Republican Caucus, you know, pouring a lot of money into their members' races to fight against these folks.

>> And I think too, if you want to break it down in terms of, of again, how important, you know, look at particularly the Upstate, of course, there are races dotted all around the state between House Republican Caucus members or their aligned challengers and House Freedom Caucus members, and their aligned challengers.

But look at the Upstate.

There are, you know, Spartanburg, Anderson County.

We have seen over the last couple of years, incumbents with with power such as Rita Allison, the former House Education chairwoman, Brian White, the former Ways and Means Committee chair, lose their seats to House Freedom Caucus aligned candidates and now House Freedom Caucus candidates.

We know that, for example, the governor and others have been actively campaigning for Jay West, the assistant majority leader in Anderson.

So there is a lot of focus right now on particularly Anderson County and, I think, the other counties, because those counties have done such a good job in terms of booting incumbents out of their seats.

But of course, all over the state, there are a variety of those kinds of races that are worth paying attention to on Tuesday.

>> Yeah.

And of course, the governor is the most popular elected official in the state, according to the Winthrop poll that just came out.

So his help does not hurt in some ways, maybe.

But of course it's primary.

So there's a lot of motivated voters.

These are some very active, engaged people that are voting in the primaries that make these decisions too.

>> Right, and going off the governor, I think this is important too, you know, the governor has enjoyed a very positive relationship with the House of Representatives under now Speaker Merle Smith and his predecessor, former Speaker Jay Lucas.

Obviously, the budget starts in the House.

He's seen a lot of his executive budget reflected in their budget.

He's seen some of the policy decision wants that he has proposed also reflected on the House floor.

So it's important to clearly him in the governor's office to continue this good relationship and some of the issues that he has wanted to move forward, such as this Health Consolidation bill that was objected to by a House Freedom Caucus member on the last day of session.

Probably not, not been a very good, good sign to him.

You know, he's, he's largely been hands off of this fight between the two, mostly behind the scenes, has said things like, I want these two sides to get along.

You know, people don't need to have an entertainment reality show on the House floor.

But I think what has occurred over the last couple of weeks has has clearly shifted the governor and his office to get more active in terms of supporting either House Republican incumbents or even some challengers to House Freedom Caucus members.

>> And then when we shift over to the Senate, Maayan, and we have a couple of minutes left here, but the Senate's also for reelection this year, 46 seats there every four years.

This is the first time there is that new redrawn map.

There's 30 Republicans, 15 Democrats and one independent who caucuses with Democrats.

The big theme here is the sister senators.

We're talking about those women that helped to really kind of, lessen the blow when it came to the abortion ban bill that was being debated in the years past.

What's, what are you watching there?

Are there any other difficult races with just a few moments left?

>> Right, and they obviously face tough opponents because of their vote against that very restrictive abortion ban that came up on, on the floor.

So, of course, looking to see whether the Senate has fewer women is, is something definitely worth watching.

There's an open seat in Spartanburg.

Senator Scott Tally is not running for reelection.

That is a wide open race.

former Senator Lee Bright is one of those candidates in the race.

So it'll be, it remains to be seen whether the Senate becomes even more conservative based on the primary in November.

We're looking at the Richland, or, excuse me, we're looking at the primary race on the Democratic side between now Senator Dick Harpootlian and House Representative Russell Ott.

That is a very interesting race to watch.

And then there is a incredibly wide open race, for McElveen's seat in the Senate.

I mean, there are just.

>> Democrat Thomas McElveen.

Handful of candidates there on either side.

So all three of those races very, very important, I think, to the Senate.

And I've did a bad job with our time here.

We have less than a minute left, but we have Congress to look at, too.

Those are gonna be some big races.

There's a lot of people that are safe.

We're talking about Russell Fry, Joe Wilson, who has an opponent but also is going to probably cruise to reelection.

And then also folks like Ralph Norman.

But there are the big races.

And Jim Clyburn, of course, the lone Democrat.

But there are big races in the Upstate.

We're talking about Jeff Duncan's seat that's open in the third, and we're talking about William Timmons, who's fighting for reelection in the fourth against Adam Morgan.

And then down, of course, in the coastal Lowcountry in the first Congressional district, Democrats and Republicans battling it out there.

So what do you watch in these big congressional races here?

>> I think what happens between, House Freedom Caucus Chair Adam Morgan and Congressman William Timmons is probably the big one.

I mean, that seems to be the most competitive race happening right now in the primary.

And so I think that is probably the biggest race to be watching.

But yeah, the first district, William Timmons race, the open seat after Jeff Duncan is leaving.

All worth watching and very entertaining right now.

>> I know.

Any predictions, Maayan?

>> I do not make predictions.

You're wrong one time, you don't make predictions ever again.

>> Yeah, well, that's South Carolina Public Radio's Maayan Schechter who'll be joining us live in studio next Tuesday at 8 p.m. for our live primary night coverage.

We'll have analysis on results.

Polls close at 7:00 on June 11th and we'll be live at 8:00 on TV, on social media and on public radio.

So catch us there.

And, with that, I'm Gavin Jackson for South Carolina ETV.

Be well, South Carolina.

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