Category Updates

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.

Many of us, regardless of party affiliation, believed that something wasn’t quite right about the 2020 election. Unfortunately, the 2022 elections and latest 2023 elections underscored continued issues with the electronic voting systems.  Just a few examples are the ballots that were unable to be read in AZ, results that were unable to be reconciled in Texas and GA, and PA vote “flipping” in races.  This persistent pattern has resulted in voters as well as candidates losing trust in the system.

Our legislators and election officials tell us to prove that there is fraud, but it is not our job to prove fraud; it is their job to prove there isn’t.  The potential for fraud is very real. The inherent risks of computerized or electronic systems are numerous, and you only need one to corrupt the results of an election.

We have found plenty of problems in our SC voting system. Canvassing results from the 2020 election showed that in South Carolina we had dead people voting, people voting who had moved away from the state years ago, and people voting whose address is a commercial address—none of these are legitimate votes and they cancel out our legitimate votes. In fact, in Charleston, there were enough bad data points (phantom voters) to indicate that at least 3 races could have been flipped due to the data we found. Even if the data didn’t change the results of an election, how many bad votes are we willing to tolerate?

Computers are supposed to be accurate and efficient and yet we know that accuracy of our elections continues to come into question.  Our state law (Section 7-13-1340 (C ) states that if the system is not accurate then it should no longer be used. Furthermore, our state constitution (Article II Section 1) mandates that we not count ballots in secret and yet we have a black box system that does just that. If machines are so efficient, why are certain areas in our country counting votes for weeks?

Poll observation in our ‘22 elections showed election laws not being followed as well as computers that were not secure and computer “glitches” that flipped votes. There were also candidates missing from the ballots. You can read our report here.  https://www.scsafeelections.org/poll-observer-results/

No system should be tolerated if the public doesn’t trust it. We need a transparent, accurate method that people can feel confident about. The press and elected officials lambast hand-marked, hand-counted ballots, but they haven’t truly explored this method nor has it been done in decades in this state. We are currently conducting testing of this method and also writing a whitepaper with grassroots leaders in other states.  We believe we have a great method that can be done in a timely, efficient manner and would request the opportunity to test it in pilot programs in a few precincts and counties.

It took the Netherlands 5 months to move to paper ballots. It took Argentina 4 months to make the transition to paper ballots. They had an election with 30 million people and they finished counting in one day. It can be done.  Instead of thinking of all the reasons counting hand-marked ballots won’t work to justify a $51M purchase of a system people don’t trust, let’s work on how it can be done.

In the meantime, let’s move to greater transparency for our current system by allowing the public free access to voter rolls, security logs, and cast vote records, among other things. Let’s work together to make our SC elections the model for the nation.  Let’s get rid of ERIC and manage our rolls internally.   Let’s engage citizens in a discussion of how we can innovate and reengineer this process rather than uniformly denying anything could possibly be wrong and disallowing access to public records that other states provide to their citizens.

The issues we have witnessed across our nation over the past few years are endemic.  If there are issues in other states, even with other machine manufacturers, there will be issues in South Carolina.  These systems have very similar architecture.  Denying the reality of the risks and vulnerabilities is naïve and doesn’t solve anything.

Let’s stand together for free, safe elections that are secure, transparent and verifiable.  While Act 150 was a first step, we need further work to truly secure our elections. We ask you, our state representatives, senators, and governor to work for us and help us feel more confident about our vote. Properly run elections with transparent counting of all of the votes are the key to a strong republic.  Please allow hearings on election integrity bills H.4259, H.4260, H.4261 and H.3162 and let’s bring these bills out of committee for a floor vote.

Furthermore, let’s ensure that bad election legislation is not passed, like ranked choice voting and bill S406, which calls for uploading election results early. Incremental changes such as these make our systems more vulnerable to potential bad actors.  Let’s protect the sanctity of our vote in South Carolina and restore confidence in our state’s elections. We the people are counting on you to do the right thing.

Did you know that SC voters don’t have a way to verify that their vote counted?

Your vote is not counted in public, it is counted in secret.

RESOLVED, The Republican National Committee calls for a necessary “return to excellence” or in other words, a return to the simple and proven methods of precinct, ward or geographically-defined localized voting with auditable balloting procedures using paper ballots, in fair, reasonable limited time periods, using proper identification to strengthen voter confidence and to ensure that American election procedures can be a fair and open process for all to participate

Problem: Paper ballots should not be coded as the voter cannot verify. Cast Vote records which are valuable audit tools aren’t currently accessible to the public.

Solution: Bill 4261 ensures that all records such as voter rolls, Cast Vote Records (CVRs), activity and security logs, ballot reconciliation, chain of custody, incident reports and other key audit records should be available for free to the public so that they have increased confidence in the veracity of their vote by analyzing results independently. This ensures accountability of the SEC SC State Election Commission. After all, this is the people’s vote and they paid for these machines and the salaries for the agency employees. We should have access to these crucial reports to ensure that we optimize faith and trust in our elections.

Did you know that there will be a new regulation that bans drop boxes?

That is good news as it helps minimize fraud due to poor chain of custody. South Carolina doesn’t mail all registered voters ballots and they don’t use drop boxes. If we can incorporate other measures to tighten up our election process we can be the model for election integrity but we still need some work.

RESOLVED, The Republican National Committee calls for elimination of temporary or ‘pop-up’ voting

locations, drop boxes, and any other voting center that are not fairly defined and bound to a designated

geographic territory and where voting locations exist, namely by precinct, so that voting is accessible equitably by legal precinct, ward or defined geographic unit in order to provide impartial access for all voters; and

Ban drop boxes via state law and have precincts to reduce size of precincts to the legislative limit of 1500 qualified electors.  There is a current regulation that addresses this by stating that counties cannot adopt drop boxes but this issue needs to be addressed in the state law.

Problem: Mail in voting has chain of custody issues and is a potential for fraud.

Solution: Minimize reasons for absentee requests.

Bill 4260 7-15-320 ameliorates this issue by removing the age 65 and older reason for requesting an absentee ballot. 

Did you know that there is a lack of trust in our election systems and lack of transparency of the black box tabulators?

RESOLVED, The Republican National Committee supports the rights of counties and states that are willing and able to competently and efficiently implement voting procedures that do not require the use of machines and those that implement hand counting procedures that are fully auditable;

RESOLVED, The Republican National Committee calls on state legislatures, county, and municipal

governments to pass laws and municipal codes and rules that allow for full transparent hand-counting

procedures that are planned, timely and fully observable by the public and the registered parties for

geographically defined audits and recounts;

Problem: Due to the lack of trust in our election systems and lack of transparency of the black box tabulators there is a clamoring for hand-counted, hand-marked ballots.

Solution: Move to a simpler, transparent hand-counted, hand-marked ballot system.

Bill 4260 Section 8 addresses this by instituting a pilot program but should go further by allowing hand-marked, hand-counted ballots as an option for the voter, and full observation by the public.

Laws need to be passed to allow for hand counting at the local precinct in a transparent way.

Here are some methods for hand-counting ballots  https://www.scsafeelections.org/updates/check-out-these-two-hand-count-methods-for-paper-ballots/

in addition, here is a video of a demonstration of how to hand count hand-marked ballots.

Notes from our hand count workshop

Note that if we can call each race and reconcile in 2 minutes for 50 ballots. A hundred ballots would be 4 minutes and 1000 ballots (assuming maximum approximate turnout of 70% would result in would be 40 minutes. Assuming 10 races an election this would be a total time of around 400 minutes. This would take 6.67 hours but we rounded it up to 7 and 1/2 for breaks, etc. If you split that between 2 teams of 4 people that would be 3.75 hours to hand count a race. Worse case scenario would be 4 hours tops. All of it would be completed and you would just need to total the batches and send to the county.

We recommend that these counts be videotaped so that there is full transparency and verifiability and that all ballots are reconciled at the end.

We had 2 teams of 4 work on hand counts of hand marked ballots. Two callers sit on one side of the table and two talliers across from them. The ballots were from actual 2022 midterm races from ES&S machines (Printed absentee and Expressvote ADA compliant ballots). Each team counted in 50 ballot increments one race at a time.

Here are some observations:

Times ranged from 1:25 to just over 2 minutes.  There is a tradeoff between productivity and accuracy and there seemed to be a nice cadence/pace at around 1:45-2 minutes. If you go faster, it may lead to fatigue or inaccuracies. If too fast, it can create anxiety.

The first time a write-in is called out it causes some confusion so a pause would be helpful or slowing down. The same would apply to “Under” and “Over” votes.

It was suggested to put the name of the candidate on the top and bottom of the sheet so the tallier can easily see it as they progress down the sheet.

Both teams thought that using a second color for the recount was better and so it was suggested to start say with blue and recount in red. Then when you get to the next 50 ballots you can switch to red and recount blue.  Overall, they didn’t prefer blue or black and wondered if they could do say purple and green as colors that would pop more.

If caller hands ballot to other person, it may slow the process down but also check to see if there are 2 ballots.

We found it most convenient to write the candidate that was most likely to get more votes to be placed in the far left column. Less errors were produced when the majority of the tallies were placed in far-left column.

 We only used letter sized paper for the tally sheets so legal size may help for readability

May want to swap “Over and Under” on the sheet as under is used more

With one tally sheet the 1-inch binder is not as necessary

Some of the callers preferred plastic surgical gloves, others the rubber fingertips and some the sticky tack to facilitate turning the ballots.

It is definitely beneficial to agree up front on how to shorten the names to call them out.

When talliers, the counter, the observer and the videographer are ready, start the process.   One of the callers should state the date, location (precinct), race/office/issue
that is being counted and the candidate names. If you are shortening the candidate’s
name to save time in the call out   for example, using the first name state what
name or shortcut you are using so that everyone is aware up front.

Race times

Times for the team 2 were 1:40, 1:45, 1:49 &1:52.

Attached is the tally sheet we used.

Note that if we can call each race and reconcile in 2 minutes for 50 ballots. A hundred ballots would be 4 minutes and 1000 ballots (assuming maximum approximate turnout of 70% would result in would be 40 minutes. Assuming 10 races an election this would be a total time of around 400 minutes. This would take 6.67 hours but we rounded it up to 7 and 1/2 for breaks, etc. If you split that between 2 teams of 4 people that would be 3.75 hours to hand count a race. Worse case scenario would be 4 hours tops. All of it would be completed and you would just need to total the batches and send to the county.

We recommend that these counts be videotaped so that there is full transparency and verifiability and that all ballots are reconciled at the end.

Watch here:

Since 2020 many South Carolinians have lost faith in our electronic voting systems. It is essential that we enhance the transparency, accuracy, auditability and accountability of our vote. The solution is simple and it requires your small actions to make it happen. Our state already does some things right, but we can do better.

Perhaps we should follow the lead of some of the European nations and go to a system of hand-marked, hand-counted paper ballot system. This will be totally transparent and save money and time.

In this presentation we discuss the mission, accomplishments, update on the CVR lawsuit (and CVR 101) as well as what YOU can do to help make a difference.