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The RNC passed the Resolution: URGING A “RETURN TO EXCELLENCE” IN AMERICAN VOTING AND ELECTIONS.   This resolution passed unanimously and addresses many key concerns most American voters have with our current election process.  SC Safe Elections is encouraged about this first step as it addresses many key issues with elections such as:

• Encouraging/maximizing participation
• Maintaining state not federal control of election law
• Ensuring swift and accurate results
• Keeping it local with easily accessible and geographically dispersed polling places
• Ensuring that only US citizens vote
• Providing a non-electronic option to voters
• Paper ballot systems that are auditable and voter-verifiable

Here is the full resolution:

South Carolina has already addressed some of these issues and concerns (we have laws that limit ballot harvesting and do not have universal mail in balloting). As the first in the South for the Democratic and Republican primary, we can be the gold standard for election excellence if we pass additional election integrity bills.  Over the next several weeks we will show specific ways in which we can reform our current system to ensure that our voters have the utmost confidence in our elections.

We encourage our state senators and representatives, governor, and State Election Commission to support three election integrity bills currently in the House Subcommittee—H. 4259, H. 4260, and H. 4261.  These bills will allow for:

• Establishing a pilot program of hand-marked, hand-counted paper ballots
• Robust hand-count audits and forensic audits
• Eliminating early voting and electronic poll books (which are not certified) while reducing absentee balloting
• Giving full observation rights to every citizen to examine all phases of the election process
• Establishing rigorous chain of custody documentation and procedures for all system components
• Ensuring qualified electors have access to key audit documents and voter rolls at no charge

Since our state has a Republican controlled legislature as well as the governor’s seat our state should be eager to honor this resolution by passing bills that make elections trustworthy.  We will be evaluating our state elected officials on how each of them responds to these initiatives.

💥💥💥💥IMPORTANT ACTION ALERT!!!! 💥💥💥💥

Bill 150 passed in ’22 moved the needle in some instances but also took a few steps back especially by instituting two weeks of early voting. The 3 bills below focus on further enhancing SC election law so that the citizens of SC can trust elections again.

Here are the election bills that we want to support that Rob Harris and our group worked on. Of course, these are just a start and ideally we would like to go to 1 day of voting (get rid of early voting), hand-marked and hand-counted paper ballots, Get rid of ERIC, and revamp our registration process so that we have people reregister more frequently.

H.4259 Hand Count Audit Act
https://www.scstatehouse.gov//sess125_2023-2024/prever/4259_20230405.htm

This bill calls for a hand count audit of at least 5 races within 3 precincts of each county and should include one statewide office or question; one federal office; and one countywide or less than countywide office or question

It also allows a county or county chair of a political party to call for an audit up to 22 months after an election (hand count or forensic).

H.4260 Voter Access and Transparency Act

https://www.scstatehouse.gov//sess125_2023-2024/prever/4260_20230405.htm

H 4260 eliminates early voting, calls for a return to paper poll books and gives full observation rights to every citizen to observe all phases of the election process and establishes chain of custody documentation to be recorded for all components of the election systems at all times.

It also removes the 65 and older provision for absentee voting thereby reducing the amount of mail in voting.

Most importantly, it establishes a pilot program for 2024 for at least 3 counties to cast votes on hand-marked paper ballots counted by hand. THE PEOPLE WANT PAPER!

H.4261 Clean Voter Roll Act

https://www.scstatehouse.gov//sess125_2023-2024/prever/4261_20230405.htm

This bill makes the counties responsible for maintenance of the voter registration lists and ensures that SC qualified electors are able to receive and inspect at no charge essential voter registration and election reports such as voter registration lists, cast vote records, ballot review and reconciliation reports, chain of custody documents, incident reports, proof of citizenship verification, and signature verification.

H 3162

This adds a provision that any system purchased for use in SC must utilize hand-marked paper ballots that are counted by hand.

Please read these bills and call the members of the Judiciary committee if they are your representatives. This is important. They pay attention to the people who live in their district.

Here is a list of the members of the judiciary committee.

https://www.scstatehouse.gov/CommitteeInfo/housejudiciary.php

(R)  Wm. Weston J. Newton, Chairman—Beaufort County (District 120)
(R)  Wallace H. “Jay” Jordan, Jr., 1st V.C.—- Florence County (District 63)
(D)  John Richard C. King, 2nd V.C. – York County (District 49)
(R)  William H. Bailey – Horry County (District 104)
(D)  Justin T. Bamberg – Bamberg and Orangeburg (District 90)
(D)  Beth E. Bernstein – Richland County (District 78)
(R)  Thomas C. “Case” Brittain, Jr. – Horry County, Myrtle Beach (District 107)
(R)  J. Benjamin “Ben” Connell – Kershaw County (District 52)
(R)  Jason Elliott – Greenville County (District 22)
(R)  Thomas Duval “Val” Guest, Jr. – Horry County, Myrtle Beach (District 106)
(R)  Brandon Guffey – York County, Rock Hill (District 48)
(D)  Rosalyn D. Henderson-Myers- Spartanburg (District 31)
(D)  Patricia Moore “Pat” Henegan – Chesterfield, Darlington, Marlboro (Dist. 54)
(R)  Jeffrey E. “Jeff” Johnson – Horry County (District 58)
(R)  Matthew W. “Matt” Leber —-Charleston County (District 116)
(R)  John R. McCravy, III – Greenwood & Laurens (District 13)
(R)  Cody T. Mitchell – Darlington County (District 65)
(R)  Travis A. Moore – Spartanburg (District 33)
(R)  Robby Robbins – Colleton & Dorchester (District 97)
(D)  Seth Rose – Richland County (District 72)
(R)  Carla Schuessler – Horry County, Myrtle Beach (District 61)

In this podcast, team leader Laura Scharr discusses election integrity in South Carolina and the fight for transparency for Cast Vote Records. Starts at 2 hours and 5 minutes.

This consists of one ballot that is called out all at once in a “tally” method which is done by marking each choice with a marker.

Here is another method that uses counters and includes a live feed so that an instant replay can be done. This is done in pairs of candidates in each race so each ballot is tallied several times.

Clint Curtis and Beth B from Texas help demo the method they prefer which is easier on the eyes and perhaps results in fewer errors.

Both of these methods claim they can process 100 ballots with 20 races in about an hour.

In this video, Robert Borer, who ran for Secretary of State in Nebraska, demonstrates the pitfalls of the lack of transparency in our elections. A very entertaining demonstration.

Holly Kessler the Georgia state coordinator for the Citizens Defending Freedom joins SC Safe Elections to discuss progress in the great state of GA. Is the state red or blue? How are citizens reacting to the indictment of Trump? And what does she think will happen in the 2024 election?

Holly also tells us what she is doing to educate multiple counties over the state regarding a simple transparent hand-counting method for paper ballots. Paper, Please!

In this engaging conversation SCSE team leader Laura Scharr sits down with Gregg “Marcel” Dixon to discuss election integrity in South Carolina. Marcel is a Democrat who ran against Jim Clyburn to address issues in the black community that he saw as a teacher in his community.

Although Marcel and Laura are from different sides of the political spectrum there were many issues where they aligned—namely one day of voting with paper ballots and Voter ID and perhaps getting rid of the party system. This is a must see.

For more information on a paper ballot system see https://mockcountytx.us/election-results

We had some good national press recently regarding our CVR lawsuit.

Please check out these links

Gateway Pundit- South Carolina Safe Elections needs help fighting legal battle

This article includes an interview with Dr. Daugherity on Brannon Howse’s show.

American Revival Press- Freedom of Information Act is not respected in South Carolina

Here is an article regarding our CVR lawsuit as well as an interview Laura and Dr. Walter Daugherity recently did with Mike Lindell and Brannon Howse.

Start at 10:25

https://frankspeech.com/video/mike-lindell-makes-world-wide-headlines-over-fake-news-story

For those of you who still want to better understand what a Cast Vote Record is here are the basics. It is actually very simple.

What is a Cast Vote Record (CVR)?

From the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) manual Nov 2019: A CVR is an electronic record of a voter’s selections, with usually one CVR created per sheet (page) of a ballot.  Election results are produced by tabulating the collection of CVRs, and audits can be done by comparisons of the paper ballots or paper records of voter selections against the CVRs.

The CVR (Cast Vote Record) consists of several components: the ballot images aka the (CVRi), the information summarized from each ballot the (CVRc), and the database/spreadsheet of all ballots (in relative order, not the exact order as it is randomized in batches of 100 or 200). 

Here is a sample of each:

Here is another sample of the CVR spreadsheet from Arkansas

There are many complex operations performed by voting devices when voters submit their paper ballots to be scanned. These operations are mostly invisible to voters but are necessary to determine whether contest selections have been marked adequately and whether voter intent is reflected by what is marked on the ballot. Thus, the CVR is an important audit tool that provides transparency to an otherwise opaque process. It is a way we can determine what the progression of the vote is inside the tabulator.

Our current system in SC focuses on total end count but is this truly sufficient?  If you were to audit a bank account would you look at just the end balance on the statement? Of course not. You would want to examine all flows in and out of the account over a certain time period.  This is essentially what a CVR report accomplishes.

This data is helpful to look for anomalies and irregularities.  Note also that since batches of records (not the entire database) of the CVR are randomized it is near impossible to determine who voted at a specific time.  Furthermore, there is an ability for write ins and areas where there are only a few voters with certain unique ballot styles to be filtered out to further ensure that no ballot can be tied back to a voter.

CVRs are a common audit tool for elections that have been around since the mid-2000s. They were meant for election officials and the public alike to verify the vote accuracy.

The CVRs contain all or some of the following fields. (Fields marked with an asterisk are strongly desired)

*CVR Number

*Tabulator ID

* Counting Group (or other name – this tells how the vote was cast)

Batch ID

*Precinct ID

Ballot Type

What does NOT appear in a Cast Vote Record is any information which would identify the voter.

They contain, at a minimum, the specific candidates or races which were counted, and the selections chosen by a voter.

The vendors Dominion Voting Systems, Clear Ballot, and Election Systems & Software can produce a Cast Vote Record in one or several text CSV (Comma Separated Variable length) files, which contain the records of one ballot per line. This file is sometimes converted to an Excel Spreadsheet format for transmission to the public.

The bottom line is that CVRs provide essential information about our elections that allow us to better understand how our vote is counted. Our SC Constitution states “our votes must be cast in secret but not counted in secret.” The value of providing public access to these reports outweighs the concerns of “privacy.” After our votes are cast they are no longer private and there is no way to tie these ballots to a voter.

Our judicial and legislative branch needs to do the right thing and improve transparency of the election process. There is a reason they call the FOIA law the Sunshine law. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Mark Mitchell presents a historical view of polling on election integrity issues on youtube. It is a great video.

Here is a summary of the findings:

As the pandemic was emerging in January of 2020, Rasmussen asked likely voters “Are American elections fair to voters,” and 50% said yes. They also asked, “Does the federal government today have the consent of the governed?” Only 26% said yes. 

As COVID hit hard (April 14-15) people favored mail in ballots but 58% of people were concerned with the increased risk of fraud.

In October of 2020, their poll indicated that 59% of people did not think that photo IDs discriminated against voters.

Rasmussen was surprised by the large margin Biden won by. 

In December of 2020 only 36% thought the court challenges would result in Trump’s reelection; at that point most people didn’t believe in the fraud (43%). There were vast differences in R versus D results. Post January 21, 57% thought Biden won the election fairly but 34% said no. Post-election, 42% thought the mail in ballots led to unprecedented fraud. (Feb 2021)

60% of likely voters said that it is more important to make sure there is no cheating in elections as opposed to making it easier for people to vote (37%); this was more skewed to Republicans; independents were closer on this issue to Republicans

In April 21 51% of likely voters believed there was cheating in the 2020 election. This number has risen as the latest poll shows 62% believe there was cheating. Clearly public sentiment is changing based on the results of the midterms particularly AZ. People didn’t lose interest in this topic over time!

55% of likely voters support audits of election results in June 2021. This was horrifying to the pollster—why not 100%. Would you fly on an airline that didn’t have quality audits?

61% of likely voters believe that election reform must happen in swing states (June 21)

90% felt it was important to prevent cheating in elections (August 21) This was high across the board for all party affiliations. This also was high in Dec of 21.  By Dec of 2021, 59% of likely voters believed that cheating affected the outcome of the 2020 presidential election 41% of Democrats believed this as well. Their concerns about fraud had increased. The latest poll stated 62% believed there was cheating.

74% believed in requiring a photo ID so this result had a large swing from Oct of 2020.  Concern about cheating was a growing concern and photo IDs were increasing in favor.

People were vehemently against “zuck bucks,” even the Democrats. 70% think that his influence was a bad thing—62% of Dems agreed with that.