This was several days ago now — on Christmas Eve eve — but what with the holiday and all you may have missed it, so I call your attention now to the editorial in The State Sunday calling on Lillian McBride to do what she has thus far (unless something has happened that hasn’t been reported) refused to do:
GIVEN THE gravity of Richland County’s Nov. 6 elections debacle, we don’t know if there is anything Lillian McBride could have said or done to restore public confidence in her leadership or to warrant her continuing as director of elections and voter registration. But it is telling and disappointing that she has failed to try.
Other than an early attempt to blame her predecessor and a belated apology at a Richland County legislative delegation hearing, Ms. McBride has done far too little to take responsibility for or explain the fiasco that had some voters waiting up to seven hours to cast votes and led to lawsuits, lost ballots and weeks’ late final results.
We see no other way forward but for Ms. McBride to step down as a majority of county lawmakers have requested, not simply because of the Election Day disaster, but because of her overall failure to properly prepare and manage the process leading up to Nov. 6 and her inability to lead through this crisis….
Spot on. The Election Day mess was one thing. Her utter failure to show us anything whatsoever that would give us even a wisp of confidence in her since then seals the deal. If any of you have seen anything that would make you want to hire her for a position of public responsibility, please share.
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Dog bites man. They aren’t exactly way out there, taking a courageous stance….
It ain’t gonna happen. McBride isn’t going to resign; she is as stubborn as former Governot Mark Sanford was when he would found with “loose zipper syndrome”. I think that she has lost any goodwill with the Richland County Legislative Delegation. McBride ain’t going to get a $150,000 serverance package with $50,000 yearly and free life time health coverage as reported on FitsNews.
Her time for negotiation is over.
Hey, at least she’s not a quitter.
“Her utter failure to show us anything whatsoever that would give us even a wisp of confidence in her since then seals the deal. If any of you have seen anything that would make you want to hire her for a position of public responsibility, please share.”
I have been flooding social messaging trying to keep up awareness on this.
It seems that the pro McBride members of the legislative delegation are merely treading water hoping that the public will just forget about this.
This is NOT just a problem the State or editorial boards are stirring up. This affected thousands of people.
Some good things that came out of this are we found out that Mia is for real.
She is not afraid to buck the status quot and isn’t just going along to assure a spot in the old feed trough for her constituency. She has given us real leadership here by taking the problem head. She diffused the race card that many were playing by not siding with McBride. She showed real concern about the problems that Richland felt.
Its ridiculous that some lawmakers are expecting us just to shrug this off as a learning experience. This is not a $80k a year internship.
#BootMcBride
My articles on this
How Lack of Poling Machines Disenfranchise voters
http://www.columbiacents.com/home/2012/12/23/how-lack-of-polling-machines-disenfranchises-voters.html
Pros & Cons of Representative James Smith’s Election Reform Bill
http://www.columbiacents.com/home/2012/12/20/pros-cons-of-representative-james-smiths-election-reform-bil.html
I’m wondering what she’s waiting on as well. Maybe she’s trying to cut some kind of deal to go back to voter registration where she was (and where they said she did an exemplary job). Her lawyer even thought she was resigning.
This would have been an option a few weeks ago. I would have been ok with it.
Will Fits reports that she is holding out for a pretty hefty buyout. Here is the link
http://www.fitsnews.com/2012/12/19/richland-county-robbery-buyout-scheme-alleged/
Actually, Kathryn, it’s not dog bites man. It’s another brick in the wall of a community consensus, and I take note of it in that vein.
Also… and I hesitate to write this, because it’s so self-serving… The State doesn’t take stands like this as readily as it did when I was there. Looking at it from the outside, it seems that my friends and former colleagues find it more difficult to step forward and take some decisions without an editorial page editor to push the issue. So they never called on Mark Sanford to resign. So they failed to endorse anyone for president in the recent general election.
This editorial came a bit later, perhaps, than it would have if I had still been at the paper. But it DID come, and that’s worth taking note of, perhaps particularly because The State is somewhat less likely to take “off with her head” positions these days…
I’ve been quasi coordinating on this with Dan Cook over at free times. He is pretty frustrated how long its taking and the attitudes from the state leadership.
I really don’t want this to be a race thing. I though we were past that. Honestly if they are worried about a African American losing a director job isn’t there a qualified minority person that they could hire?
If she quits, she’s not going to be able to play the race card like Clyburn and Jackson want her to throw on the table.
Meeting is Jan 3rd with Voting Commission. The group that has the right to fire McBride.
Something interesting is going on with that group. I wish Liz Crum had said more about why she resigned….