By Lucy Twinkle
Well…well…well…another “election bill” being considered in the House. Last year it was H. 4919, a bill signed into law that institutionalized early voting, 14 days of early voting, in the state of South Carolina.
This year it’s S. 406 – a bill that would provide that the tabulation results from early voting be posted to the election management system BEFORE the polls open on Election Day. PLUS, under this bill, the counties would be required to report election results – not 24 hours after completing the canvassing and counting of ballots, as the law stands now – but the counties would be required to report election results continuously throughout Election Day, as prescribed by the State Election Commission (SEC).
ASK YOURSELF: Why would it be important for some people to be able to see the early voting results as they are coming into the state?
Let’s do a deeper dive…
TITLE: TO Amend the South Carolina Code of Laws…To Provide That Ballots Cast During The Early Voting Period May Begin To Be Tabulated At The Same Time As Absentee Ballots
WHAT THIS BILL DOES:
Section 1. It allows for the results from the early voting period to be tabulated and uploaded (via flash drives) into the Election Management System (the County Board of Elections Computer) at the same time as the absentee ballots start to be counted, which is 7 am on Election Day. The bill also states that the results from absentee ballots and early voting ballots would not be made available to the public until the polls close. So, presumably those charged with executing our election process WOULD have access to these results…before Election Day gets underway. Why would they want that?
Section 2. This part of the bill would amend the SC Code to say that the unofficial election results by managers of county board of elections must report – not at the completion of the canvassing and counting of ballots, which is how the law reads now – but “CONTINUOUSLY AND WITHOUT UNDUE DELAY” to the State Election Commission, as prescribed by the SEC. (which was amended today in the Constitutional Law Subcommittee to “as prescribed by the Executive Director of the SEC, in other words, Howard Knapp.”)
Why would the SEC want to keep tabs on the way the votes were coming into the state? Why does the SEC have the authority to determine how the reporting should come in? How will this reporting come in since “the machines are not connected to the Internet.” (sic)
Section 3. This section adds that any audits that are performed after the election must be conducted publicly. (NOTE: Audits are only conducted by methods “deemed appropriate by the Executive Director.”)
WHY THIS BILL?
According to testimony given today in the House Subcommittee on Constitutional Law by a “Miss T,” this bill is important because it would alleviate the extreme pressure on the election workers. Hmmmm….how long does it take to insert a flash drive into the system to upload the results? Are we really saving time here?
Could this be done later in the day? For perspective, to transfer 1Gbyte @ 10M BPS (e.g. Ethernet) it takes about 15 minutes. They will still need to do this so no time saved it would just happen much earlier.
Is there another reason why some people would want this information to be uploaded PRIOR to the opening of Election Day?
Who would be able to see this information?
Why would they want it?
What would they be able to do with this information once they have it?
BOTTOM-LINE: What is the REAL motivation of this bill?
As a friend of mine remarked to me, “What this bill does, is it gives the state, county, SCYTL, SEC, DHS and CISA and God only knows who else that can hack into the system, early information that could potentially enable a bad actor to have that information to be able to change election outcomes. It gives them a heads up.”
If that is the case, if the real reason is to enable state actors in charge of our elections the ability to influence, or even change, the outcome of an election, I can only say that the effect of this bill is to potentially “codify the steal.” And, that’s not good.
Anything that could possibly subvert the will of The People, or impinge on our State Constitution’s mandate that votes are to be cast in secret (are they really being cast in secret if people behind the scenes are monitoring the trends?) and counted publicly (not early or behind the scenes) should be defeated.
CALL TO ACTION: Please call your legislators to tell them to NOT PASS THIS BILL. It makes no sense.