Yes, there’s a primary in June.
And our friend Lynn has been out there working hard to try to help us participate in it more fully, as citizens should do.
So I thought I’d share this release she sent out today:
MDW SC Update: Big Changes for June Primaries
The State Election Commission (SEC) has announced Act 165 changes in place for June primaries at https://www.scvotes.gov/early-voting-now-effect-june-primaries. Changes have not been made consistently throughout the SEC website, so this page should be considered accurate when there are conflicts within www.scvotes.gov or with county websites. Everyone is doubtless scrambling to make changes.
The major changes in in-person voters affecting voters now:
- Excused absentee in-person voting is no longer authorized in SC law.
- No-excuse in-person voting will begin on Tuesday, May 31 and continue through Friday, June 10. Early voting locations will be closed Saturday and Sunday, June 4-5.
- Early voting locations will include county election offices. Additional locations will be posted by all counties to www.scvotes.govby May 24.
- Early voting for June Runoffs will be held Wednesday, June 22 through Friday, June 24, at the same hours and locations as the primaries.
Excused absentee voting by mail will be open to all voters with disabilities, those 65 or over, members of the Armed Forces and their families residing with them, and voters admitted to the hospital on an emergency basis within four days of election day.
Others who may vote by mail are those who are unable to vote in person during both the two-week early in-person voting period and election day due to employment, caretaking responsibilities, incarceration, or other absence from the county of primary residence.
SEC indicates that new witness requirements for mail absentee ballots will not go into effect until the General Election in November. (Ballot materials are doubtless already at the printers.)
In November, and even now, we encourage voters who can do so to use the in-person early voting option, which presents far fewer opportunities for technical defects in applications or ballots, or just slow USPS, to lead to an inability to vote or a ballot that isn’t counted. (Legislators declined to require notice-and-cure so that voters could correct technical defects.)
Please read the SCVotes announcement at https://www.scvotes.gov/early-voting-now-effect-june-primariesfor more details.
Anyone with questions about other provisions of the new legislation should consult the final version of Act 165 at https://www.scstatehouse.gov/sess124_2021-2022/bills/108.htm.
Also, stay tuned for SEC announcements regarding public input into regulations to be developed under the new law. The new law requires regulations that will dictate consistency between county election offices and also regulate our organizations involved in voter services. It is a very important provision of South Carolina law that regulations must be developed with public input!
Lynn Shuler Teague
VP for Issues and Action, LWVSC
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My wife and I no longer vote. We made this decision last year.
We were accused of committing voter fraud in November 2020 by a few folks as well as a local politician who had a failed election bid.
We decided then we would no longer vote and communicated that to our local elections office to remove our names from the voter rolls. My 21 year old did not contact the elections office but I don’t believe there is any interest in voting again because of our experience.
My 18 year old had a chance to register to vote at school when he turned 18 but is not interested.
Our incompetent legislature also failed to pass the bill reforming the mess that is the University of South Carolina Board of Trustees. They should be ashamed of themselves, but they aren’t. (My current state senator just ignores the issue no matter how many times he’s asked about it by me or others- just refuses to respond).
As a result, a number of members- one of which has served as a trustee for 40 years and who graduated college in the mid 1950s will still be allowed to be on the board, regardless of the pathetic failures he helped create over the past few years.
To call the current board Keystone Cops is much too generous. But the legislature doesn’t care.
We were just about to have the weekly ADCO meeting (by Zoom, of course — I don’t go to offices), and then it was delayed when we got a text from a colleague saying, “I am still in poll clerk training. Thought it was only an hour but lots of questions because of new procedures.”
So sometimes the news just reaches right out and touches us in our lives.
Me, I was amazed. I thought, “You mean some people actually get up and go do other stuff BEFORE a meeting that’s at the crack of 10 a.m.?”
You think I’m joking, but that’s what I thought… That’s the extent to which all those years of working late nights on a morning newspaper affected my personal clock…
Of course, this time of year is worse, because when the clock says 10, it’s actually 9…
When I said, parenthetically, that “I don’t go to offices,” I wasn’t kidding, either.
There have been three exceptions in the last two years — I’ve had two meetings with one client, and then just recently I went to that presser we had for another client, the one about the jail lawsuit. Oh, and once a couple of months ago I went to get a picture of yet another client who was receiving an award on the steps of the State House — but that, technically, was not in an office.
Otherwise, I find I can do everything I need to do right here in my home office, thank you very much…
There is a HUGE shortage of poll workers across the country. With the threats (including death threats) many received after 2020 and being accused of fraud and illegal activities, and some states passing rules that make poll workers subject to felonies over things that someone could perceive as a problem has caused thousands of poll workers to quit.
There was little punishment (or no punishment) for those making actual threats against poll workers and their families (as opposed to every Republican freaking out that someone would dare protest in front of a Supreme Court justice’s home).
My county has been advertising for months for poll workers. As far as I know, they are still in search of help. They likely won’t get it.
As someone mentioned, if the only folks that are willing to work the polls ends up being those that accused everyone of fraud in 2020, we are in a mess of trouble with being able to trust the process. But maybe that was the goal all along.
Of course, there’s another cause…
One factor or set of factors, acting upon this shortage is likely the same thing that has led to shortages of fast-food workers, lifeguards (I just learned about that one a few days ago), and people who man the phones at all the places I’m forced to call to try to get something done.
Multiple things have happened to cause people to turn away from these tasks. One of them is very much related to the political problems you describe. It’s the fact that people are crazy now — not just politically, but in all sorts of ways — and no longer have the slightest notion of how grownups are supposed to act. And they take it out on people whose jobs force them to deal with the public…
Yes this is a reference to the subject matter of such previous posts as this one and this one and this one, and others…
Did you notice that in Pennsylvania, Trump endorsed dr Oz was behind on election night but as more votes have been counted since election night, he retook the lead.
Have Trumpers accused anyone of fraud like they did in 2020 when Trump was ahead early and then as votes were counted he lost the lead?
So it’s fraud if it hurts a Trumper but it’s great if it helps a Trumper? Is that the GOP standard?
Daniel Dale of CNN pointed this out on Twitter in nice detail by retweeting some facts
https://twitter.com/prchovanec/status/1526917482241568768?s=20&t=w-YE4M1dBp_pjF8tCY_EzQ
Also of note, the GOP nominee for PA governor, as Jake Tapper pointed out “ Mastriano, one of the most fervent spreaders of Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election, a man who wanted to disenfranchise the 7 million voters of PA that year, is now the GOP gubernatorial nominee.”
Oddly enough, one of the Pennsylvania Trumpers last night was telling everyone at his post election party that they need to wait on absentee ballots to be counted because they were still being counted and it might take a little time because it took longer to count them.
Ironic given his statements in 2020 that because absentee ballots were still being counted (causing Trump to lose his lead) that fraud was going on.
Funny how that works.