News

Cyber security expert Julie Baker talks about the many vulnerabilites in our electronic voting system.

She steps through all the ways risk is embedded in the system.

SC Safe Elections Team Leader Laura Scharr provides the big picture view, why these vulnerabilities need to be addressed and what you can do now to help.

Call or email your legislators today and ask them to make changes that allow more accountability. The SEC wants to fix this by giving themselves more money to the tune of $11M and to hire 50 more employees to audit themselves. BTW, an audit by definition shouldn’t be done by your own organization. That is NOT accountability. Is it time for the Secretary of State–an elected position–to take more responsibility?

In this video, SC Safe Elections talks to forensic accountant Laura Downing and Cybersecurity expert Julie Baker to discuss the audit of the SC Election Commission by the Legislative Audit Council. We summarize the top findings of the report which is a must read and can be found here: https://lac.sc.gov/reports/reports-agency-a-k/sec-2024

Read the executive summary here:

How can the people of South Carolina trust their elections when they know that:
*Only 58% of the counties complied with the audit.
*$5M of election equipment is unaccounted for
*Recommendations from the audit done 10 years ago were never implemented
*Data was not being shared with ERIC nor were ERIC recommendations for list removals being followed
*Post-election hand count audits were not uniform, not done properly and were considered unusable. *Clear Ballot virtual audits also showed error rates that exceeded the allowable machine error rate.
*Most concerning, citizens were kept from observing the elections and audits as well as from obtaining valuable election records

These are just some of the lowlights…..

Please contact the house constituional subcommittee today regarding supporting H 4935.

Send a letter to the House Constitutional Law subcommittee members and call or email each member below to ask them to support this bill with a hearing: 

HJudConstitutionalLaws@schouse.gov

CONSTITUTIONAL LAWS SUBCOMMITTEE 

Wallace H. “Jay” Jordan, Jr., Chairman 803-734-3114

Justin T. Bamberg D 803-212-6907 

Travis A. Moore 803-212-6893

William Weston J. Newton 803-734-3120

 William W. “Will” Wheeler, III  803-212-6958

All of your hard work resulted in us getting a hearing for the election bills filed by Rob Harris H4259, H4260 and H4261. We went to the Blatt building last Thursday and it was a crowded agenda of multiple election bills. We were still able to get our speakers to testify on 2 of the 3 above bills.

Here is a description of the bills:

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!

The videos of these are below and the speakers who advocated for these bills were nothing short of excellent.  These are a must watch!!!! Special thanks to Lea and Julie for taking the time and driving to Columbia to make this happen!

Hand count Audit Act -Lea Williams Watch now!

Voter Access and Transparency Act-Julie Baker Watch now!

So far these haven’t come out of subcommittee. (The next step would be for them to go to the House Judiciary Committee). In order to track progress on thewse bills download the SC Legislature app to get alerts on the bills.

Would this be allowed in corporate America? No wonder we don’t trust elections

The Legislative Audit council was tasked with auditing the SC Election Commission and the report that was released this month is eye-opening. From their website: “The South Carolina Legislative Audit Council conducts independent, objective performance audits of state agencies and programs, as requested by the General Assembly and mandated by law. The purpose of this oversight role is to provide information which will assist the General Assembly and the public in determining whether state agencies are efficiently, effectively, and lawfully managing public resources, and whether agency programs are meeting their intended objectives. “

The report that was released this month is eye-opening. Forensic auditor Laura Downing read the report and released this summary statement and sent it to the governor. She sent a bit lengthier summary to the heads of the senate and house. See the document below:

This report underscores the complexity of our election processes as well as the lack of transparency. There are many areas of concern as well as the fact that recommendations they gave 10 years ago when they last audited this agency were not followed.

We encourage you to read this as the summary doesn’t do it justice and the report is quite comprehensive as well as concerning. My favorite part is about teh Richland county whiteboard that listed all the passwords for the machines and said “don’t give these out.” You can’t make this up.

Here is the link to the full report: https://lac.sc.gov/sites/lac/files/Documents/Legislative%20Audit%20Council/Reports/A-K/SEC_2024.pdf

What a great day and a powerful moment.  We will never forget the feeling of passion and patriotism in the state house on January 9th. It was a great vibe and so wonderful seeing all the beautiful smiling faces of people who care about their country and their vote in the same room. Much thanks to all of the speakers. They did a great job.  The weather held off until the mid afternoon so we were able to start around 9:45 and end at 11ish.  So many of you met with your legislators afterwards —We are sure they felt the blitz.  In fact, the York group even waited by the entrance to the state house from the garage to educate the legislators as they entered the building. 😊

Despite the weather, school closures and storm warnings, patriots showed up! Over half of our counties were represented and we had over 150 people there by our guesstimate. We had 250ish confirmed prior to the weather so if the weather had cooperated it would have been closer to 300.  We want to acknowledge all of you who took the time to be there, took off work, braved the storm, made signs, listened to the speakers and then talked to your legislators. This is how we affect change.  Numbers matter and we showed how this issue is broad and deep in SC. Kudos and heartfelt thanks and appreciation to all of you.

God had us there at the time for a reason and it yielded more blessings.

The results—

S406 for now is essentially killed.  You did that!!! No uploading of early voting results before the polls close.

Bills H. 4259, H4260, and H4261 are going to be heard next week in the House Judiciary committee.  You did that too!

All of you made this happen with your letters, calls, signs (which were great by the way) presence, prayer and persistence. You should be very proud of yourself. We the people can make a difference.

With Appreciation,

The SCSE Team

Here is the link for those of you who couldn’t make it.