Category Archives: SC News/Commentary

SC Progressive Network scrambles to preserve voting machine records

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If the 46 county election offices are not stopped, within days they will erase the most critical data from the memories of all the voting machines, warns SC Progressive Network Director Brett Bursey. With controversy over the reliability of the touch-screen computers heating up, the Network is working to ensure that valuable information is not lost as counties prepare the machines for the upcoming run-off elections.

Bursey explained that the state Election Commission only keeps a summary of the information from the counties, and that only by preserving or copying the flash cards (memory chips) inside the computer will there be enough information to perform an audit.

“There is no way the machines you have in South Carolina can be audited without all the information on the computer flash card in each machine,” Dr. Douglas Jones said. Jones has taught at the University of Iowa Department of Computer Science since 1980, served on the Iowa Board of Examiners for Voting Machines and Electronic Voting Systems from 1994 to 2004, and chaired the board for three terms.

Jones, who serves on the Federal Election Assistance Commission’s Technical Guidelines Development Committee, has performed numerous audits on voting machines like those used in South Carolina. He provided the Network with an affidavit outlining the necessary steps to preserve data for an audit.

“We have been in communication with the US Justice Department’s Voting Rights Section,” Bursey said. “We are arguing that erasing the data violates the federal statute (USC 42-1974) that requires all records in a federal election to be preserved for 22 months.”

Bursey said that if the Justice Department doesn’t intervene, they will try to get a federal judge to order a halt to erasing the records. “We are not questioning candidates, motives or conspiracy theories,” Bursey said. “We simply want a trustworthy audit to assure that all votes are counted accurately.”

“It’s not difficult or expensive to copy the flash card,” Dr. Jones said. “You can hook up a flash card reader that you use to download pictures on your computer from a digital camera and save the data to a CD.” Replacing the flash card would cost a few dollars for each machine.

The flash card records all actions taken on the machine, the time of the vote or any errors in an “events log.” The “ballot image log” records the actual ballot cast. The detailed information on the flash cards is not saved by the state or counties and is routinely erased to prepare the machines for the next election.

Even as the calls increase for investigations into several races, counties will erase the data and install the ballot program for the June 22 runoff. “In a matter of days, there won’t be any way to determine whether the machines played a role in the unusual vote counts,” Bursey said. “We simply want a trustworthy audit to assure that all votes are counted accurately.”

Sen. Phil Leventis (D-Sumter) has sponsored legislation to require voting machines to produce a voter-verifiable paper record that can be used to recount or audit an election.

“With these machines not only is there no paper trail to examine, if the records are erased it’s like cremating the body before the autopsy is performed,” he said.

The Network presented expert testimony at a SC Election Commission Board meeting in  2004, urging the agency not to buy the iVotronic computers that do not have a voter verified paper record. SC is one of four states that has neither a paper record nor a regular audit of its machines.

Statement from Judge Vic Rawl regarding voting irregularities

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Earlier today, our campaign filed a protest of last Tuesday’s election results with the South Carolina Democratic Party.

We have filed this protest not for my personal or political gain, but on behalf of the people of South Carolina.

There is a cloud over Tuesday’s election. There is a cloud over South Carolina, that affects all of our people, Democrats and Republicans, white and African-American alike.

At this point, the people of our state do not have the basic confidence that their vote will be counted.

The strange circumstances surrounding Tuesday’s vote require a thorough investigation. For better or worse, this protest process is the only platform currently available for that investigation.

And let me be clear: regardless of the outcome of this protest, a full and unblinking investigation of this election and the overall integrity of South Carolina’s election system must go forward. Whether our protest is upheld or not, I intend to bring my full energies to electoral reform well into the future.

I want to speak briefly about the bases for our protest.

First is ongoing analyses of the election returns themselves, which indicate irregularities.

Second are the many voters and poll workers who continue to contact us with their stories of extremely unusual incidents while trying to vote and administer this election.

These range from voters who repeatedly pressed the screen for me only to have the other candidate’s name appear, to poll workers who had to change program cards multiple times, to at least one voter in the Republican primary who had the Democratic U.S. Senate race appear on her ballot.

For those who experienced problems voting, I urge you to go to our website, www.vicrawl.com and use the form there to report them. You can also call our Election Integrity Hotline at 843-278-0510.

Third is the well-documented unreliability and unverifiability of the voting machines used in South Carolina.

It is worth noting that these machines were purchased surplus from Louisiana after that state outlawed them.

The full details of our protest will be presented on Thursday.

For the people of South Carolina, getting to the bottom of Tuesday’s results will build confidence, either way.

I also hope that a full and frank discussion of our voting system will result in substantial reform.

At the risk of repetition, this protest is not about me, or my personal political fortunes. Indeed, if the protest is upheld and a new election ordered, I have not decided whether to run in it.

But, either way, I am not done with the issue of fixing our elections.

Lastly, let me make something clear. Like all of you, I am aware of the controversies surrounding Mr. Greene. This protest is not about him either.

I would like to speak directly to Mr. Greene and say: “Sir, this is not about you, and it’s not about me. I wish you and your family nothing but the best in the weeks and months ahead.”

Sex and Silliness in South Carolina

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By Tom Turnipseed
Columbia, SC

In the most stunning upset in South Carolina’s sordid political history, Alvin Greene, unknown and  unemployed, defeated Vic Rawl, former judge, legislator, and county council member, by a 59 to 41 percent margin to win the Democratic nomination for US Senate. The mysterious Greene will face Republican incumbent Jim DeMint, an ultraconservative tea-bagger, in November.  The state Democratic Party has asked Greene to withdraw from the race because he faces a felony obscenity charge. Greene was recently charged with disseminating, procuring or promoting obscenity. Police say he showed obscene photos to a University of South Carolina student. He has been appointed a public defender which requires proof of being an indigent.  The 32-year-old unemployed veteran haltingly insisted he was a democrat and would not withdraw as he discussed his curious campaign with Keith Olbermann, but had “no comment” on the criminal charge.

The mysterious Mr. Greene told reporters he was the “real deal” and would “make a difference.”

Greene recently got out of the Army, and lives at his dad’s home in rural Clarendon County. He presented a $10,400 personal check to the Democratic Party headquarters for his filing fee but was told it had to come from a campaign account.  He left and came back soon with a check that was accepted. Greene said he got the money by saving it up in the service.

He had no campaign signs, website, or media ads and didn’t attend the South Carolina Democratic Party convention in April.

SC Congressman Jim Clyburn said it was “shenanigans” and that Greene must have been “planted” and financed by those who opposed Rawl and supported DeMint. Former Democratic Chairperson Dick Harpootlian told NPR that the alphabetical placement of Greene above Rawl on the ballot could be the reason for the unbelievable upset and also mentioned the extremely low quality of life of poor and working class people in South Carolina.

In the South Carolina Republican Gubernatorial primary contest a week before the June 8 vote,sState Sen. Jake Knotts of Lexington County called Representative. Nikki Haley, an Indian-American candidate, a “raghead”   Knotts said Haley was hiding her true religion from voters. “She’s a f…king raghead,” Knotts said. He later clarified his statement, saying he did not mean to use the F word. Haley led the ticket in the Republican Primary, 49% to 23% for Congressman Gresham Barrett the 2nd place finisher. Haley and Barrett are competing in a June 28 runoff.

Knotts is a likable former cop.  He’s a friendly caricature of a Southern Sheriff like Rod Steiger’s portrayal of Sheriff Gillespie in The Heat of the Night. Knotts told Corey Hutchins of Free Times of Columbia that Haley was set up to run for governor by a network of Sikhs and outside influences in foreign countries.  Knotts said Haley is ashamed of her religion and is hiding behind being a Methodist.  “South Carolina is a religious community.  We need a good Christian to be our governor,” he said. “She’s hiding her religion. She ought to be proud of it. I’m proud of my god.”

Knotts says he believes Haley’s father has sent letters to India saying that Haley is the first Sikh running for high office in America. He says her father walks around Lexington, SC wearing a turban. “We’re at war over there,” Knotts said.  He said he did not mean the United States was at war with India, but was at war with “foreign countries.  “We got a raghead in Washington; we don’t need one in South Carolina,” he said, referring to President Obama, whose father was a Muslim from Africa. Knotts has rejected the Republican Executive Committee of Lexington County’s request that he resign, saying that libertarians were taking over the party.

Recently, political blogger Will Folks said he’d had an intimate relationship with Haley in early 2007.  Folks is a former campaign staffer for Governor Mark Sanford, who is a Haley supporter.  On June 2, Larry Marchant, a prominent lobbyist said he had sex with Haley while they were both married.  Haley has denied any sexual infidelity, and volunteered to resign if the charges were proven to be true after she becomes Governor.

Political nuttiness is nothing new in South Carolina:  In 1858, US Congressman Preston Brooks  “caned” abolitionist US Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, crippling him for life; when South Carolina seceded from the Union in 1860, James L. Petigru famously remarked, “South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum”; Strom Thurmond impregnated his family’s 15 year old black maid and sent his daughter up north to hide her away;  in 2009, Congressman Joe Wilson shouted, “you lie” at President Obama who was addressing a joint session of the US Congress; and in 2009, Governor Mark Sanford told us he was hiking the Appalachian Trail while he was in Argentina shacking up with his “soul mate”.

Sex and silliness, mystery and meanness, South Carolina politics is a never-ending mess.

Tom Turnipseed is an attorney, writer and peace activist in Columbia, SC. His blog is at http://tomandjudyonablog.blogspot.com.

Seniors first to benefit from new health law with $250 rebate checks

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Last year, about 61,000 Medicare beneficiaries in South Carolina hit the “donut hole” — the gap in prescription drug coverage in Medicare Part D — and as a result received no help with the cost of their medications.

That’s what happened to 72-year-old Mary Edna Crider of St. Matthews, SC. And it wasn’t the first time.

Crider, who has diabetes and suffers from a heart condition, said last year she hit the donut hole in early summer. “This year we were into it by April,” she said.

“I take a good bit of medication,” she said, and estimates they cost between $700-$800 a month. “My husband gets a good retirement check, but we have other expenses and the money doesn’t go that far. We get by.”

Crider will be among Medicare beneficiaries who, beginning this week, will receive a $250 rebate check in the mail from the government as part of the new health care law. “I think it’s good,” she said. “I’ll put it up to buy medicine.”

Medicare enrollees pay 25 percent of their prescription drug costs until the total reaches $2,830 for the year. Then they fall into the coverage gap known as the “donut hole” and have to pay a total of $4,550 in out-of-pocket prescription drug expenses before the plan resumes paying nearly 100 percent of drug costs. Some 4 million seniors will be in the donut hole this year, and will become eligible to receive rebate checks.

The rebate checks are the first of several provisions of the new law that will affect seniors. Throughout the rest of the year, seniors across the country will receive checks as they enter the coverage gap.  The law will close the gap over the next 10 years, cutting the donut hole in half by 2011 and eliminating it entirely in 2020.

“The new health care law offers lots of benefits for seniors,” said Julie Harbin, President of the South Carolina Alliance for Retired Americans. “It stops overpayments to private Medicare Advantage insurance companies that have made huge profits while causing millions of Americans to pay higher monthly premiums for their Medicare coverage.”

The law also protects nursing home residents against elder abuse and neglect, and it prevents discrimination against early retirees by health insurance companies.

Crider hopes the health care reforms help the people she sees at the drug store. “Bless their hearts, some of them don’t have enough money to buy a full prescription, but the pharmacy won’t let them buy half. I’d go out of business working there. I’d be giving people what they need.”

While Crider has not had to go without her medications, she isn’t above asking her doctor for free samples. As she says, every little bit helps.

For more about the South Carolina Alliance for Retired Americans, call 803-957-8740 or email scalliance@mindspring.com.

President Obama to speak via televised town hall on how the new health care law affects seniors

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On June 8, 11:15am – 12:45pm, the Alliance for Retired Americans will take part in a one-time, national “tele-town hall” broadcast on C-SPAN and on-line via web streaming at www.healthreform.gov. In South Carolina, Alliance members and allies are invited to watch the event together at the Modjeska Simkins House, 2025 Marion St., downtown Columbia. Free snacks and beverages provided, or bring your own bag lunch. There is a deli across the street.

President Obama will field questions regarding the new health care law and how it benefits seniors. Topics to be covered include the $250 checks for seniors caught in the Medicare prescription drug “doughnut hole” coverage gap, and efforts to combat scams associated with those checks. The CSPAN and phone portion of the town hall will start at 11:15 with Sec. Sebelius.The President will come on at approximately 11:40, and will speak until about 12:45.

For details, call 803-808-3384 or email scalliance@mindspring.com.

Immigrants R Us

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By Tom Turnipseed
Columbia, SC

The South Carolina Legislature is considering an anti-immigrant bill much like Arizona’s draconian law. It requires police to check a person’s residency status when stopped or detained for any reason and makes it a crime for illegal immigrants to solicit work.  Opponents of the bill say it would lead to racial profiling, marginalize the state’s Hispanic community and polarize the state.  On May 28, people who oppose the bill dominated public comment before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee claiming it was un-American and racist.

Bill Bunch, a small-business owner said “It smacks of racism and it smacks of pandering. You’re using these people as pawns for your own political gain.”

I serve on the Board of the S.C. Hispanic Leadership Council. Our Board President, Lad Santiago, told the legislators, “It polarizes our community by allowing for overt distinction of physical attributes and a law that allows this is an affront to all that is fair and just in America.”

Exactly what is fair and just in this land of immigrants? Discrimination and injustices against the “shanty Irish” or the Chinese “yellow peril” because of their race and ethnicity was certainly not fair or just. Over 400 years ago people from Europe migrated to what is now the United States and since then immigrants have come here from every country and region of the world. From the dawn of human history, people have constantly migrated all over the world.  But as Hegel said, “We learn from history that we do not learn from history.”

A consensus of historians agree that indigenous people, also known as Native Americans or Indians, were in the Americas at least 10,000 years before the European Christopher Columbus “discovered” America in 1492. Many Native Americans are descendants of people who lived in the southwest and far western region of what is now the United States. Their forebears were there thousands of years before white Europeans came to this continent. They are now called “illegal immigrants” by race-baiting politicians.

When the Spanish arrived in the Americas, Europe was ravaged by war, oppression, religious fanaticism, disease and starvation.  Native Americans were generally healthy, and mostly peaceable. Columbus sold his sponsors on the idea he would find a passage to China and the riches of the Orient, but “discovered” the Americas instead, so he decided to pay for his voyage in a commodity he found in ample supply—human lives.  He seized 1,200 Tiano Indians from the island of Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic), crammed them onto his ships, and sent them to Spain, where they were paraded naked through the streets of Seville and sold as slaves in 1495.  Because Columbus captured more Indian slaves than he could transport to Spain in his small ships, he put them to work as slaves for his family and followers throughout the Caribbean.

It was cheaper to work Indians to death and replace them than keep them alive.  In California the native people were forced to work in the fields on a starvation diet. They died from overwork, starvation and disease and were continually replaced, wiping out the indigenous populations.

As a descendant of Choctaw Indians I despise the nationalistic and historically blind rhetoric we hear about immigration.

European conquest of Mexican Native Americans exemplifies such blindness. European Americans under the flag of the United States took the land from these indigenous Americans in the Mexican Wars. Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821, and the new Mexican republic included present-day Mexico and the territory that today constitutes five southwestern states and more territory further north.

In 1835 United States settlers in Texas revolted against Mexico, fought at the Alamo in 1836, and formed their own republic. In the years that followed, the United States pushed farther westward. The imperial doctrine of Manifest Destiny, the belief that God had destined the United States to be bordered on the east and west by the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans, was used to justify the United States’ encroachment upon Mexican territories. It finally provoked a war in 1846 that enabled the United States to take almost half of Mexico’s territory.

Hard-working Mexicans in the United States had ancestors who lived in the Southwestern part of what is now the United States for thousands of years before there was a United States. Their ancestors were forcibly removed by the United States.  Should they be treated as undocumented criminals?

The best solution to the immigration question is comprehensive immigration reform legislation at the federal level that will:

  • Provide a path to permanent resident status and citizenship for all members of our communities;
  • Reunite families and reduce immigration backlogs;
  • Secure the border in a humane way;
  • Punish unscrupulous employers who drive down wages and make it hard for honest employers to compete in today’s economy;
  • And provide rights to all workers in the United States.

Such Comprehensive Immigration Reform legislation must also be enforced primarily by the federal government.  The Arizona and proposed South Carolina laws, in  practice, will take even more resources away from state and local law enforcement who need to focus on apprehending real criminals who steal and commit violent crimes rather than on poor and peaceful working people who harvest our crops, construct our homes and do service work for our travel and hospitality industry.

A fair and just America must live the promise we make to the world.
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
[Emma Lazarus]

Tom Turnipseed is an attorney, writer and peace activist in Columbia, SC. Read his blog here.

Activists rally to restore HIV funding in state budget bill

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Rep. Joe Neal, who also serves as the SC Progressive Network’s Co-chair, speaks at the rally May 25.

Advocates working on behalf of South Carolinians with HIV/AIDS rallied at the State House yesterday morning to pressure the legislature to restore the funding for critical services that the House proposed to cut in its budget bill. Reps. Joe Neal and Bakari Sellers addressed the crowd, praising them for staying vigilant and standing for the state’s most vulnerable citizens.

The rally was organized by the SC Campaign to End AIDS, a member of the SC Progressive Network.

The House cuts would end all state funding for HIV/AIDS prevention and drug assistance, would limit prescription drugs for Medicaid patients and cap enrollment in the state’s Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Later in the day, the Senate rejected the cuts to health care. The bill now goes to conference committee. (See story in The State.) The Senate has named Sens. John Land, D-Clarendon, Hugh Leatherman, R-Florence, and Mike Fair, R-Greenville, to the committee. The House has named Reps. Kenny Bingham, R-Lexington, Bill Clyburn, D-Aiken, and Dan Cooper, R-Anderson, to the committee.

Those committee members need to hear from us.

To see more photos from the rally, click here.

Speak up before budget cuts kill critical programs

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Last week the S.C. House of Representatives adopted amendments to the state budget bill that eviscerated health and human services for low-income South Carolinians in order to plug a $20 million hole in the judiciary’s budget.

Instead of considering other logical revenue sources, they balanced the budget at the hard expense of the working poor and children. They gutted programs to come up with $24.3 million for the judiciary and $22.5 million for the Department of Public Safety.

This amendment includes:

  • Capping enrollment in the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), leaving 70,000 to 100,000 eligible children without health insurance;
  • Cutting funds to the Department of Social Services that assist low-income households with children;
  • Limiting Medicaid patients to 3 drug prescriptions per month, down from at least 4 and up to 10 prescriptions, forcing the seriously ill to make potentially life-threatening medical decisions where they must treat one ailment at the expense of others;
  • Cutting prevention programs for kidney disease, HIV, breast, cervical, and colorectal cancer, and funding for AIDS treatment programs; and
  • Cutting grants to rural hospitals and funding to trauma centers.

Please contact your Senator today and ask him to vote to non-concur with the House amendments.  (You can locate your Senator by going here.)

While cutting these life-saving programs, the House found $240,000 to fund beach re-nourishment and $3 million, the exact amount cut from CHIP, to add to the House of Representatives operations budget.

One obvious and just way to raise revenue would be to increase the sales tax on luxury vehicles. At present, a person purchasing a yacht, a jet, or a luxury car in South Carolina pays the same $300 sales tax as the person buying the cheapest car on the lot so that he or she can get to work and support a family. Such a tax could bring South Carolina more than $100 million per year to fund basic services.

It is past time for our legislators to consider other revenue options, rather than continuing to cut essential programs for our state’s most vulnerable population.  There is no reason we should have to choose between public safety, a strong judiciary and caring for our neighbors in times of need.

This report was compiled by SC Appleseed.

SC Alliance for Retired Americans talk shop

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The SC Alliance for Retired Americans held an informational drop-in on May 20 at the Modjeska Simkins House in Columbia. The national Alliance’s Bob Kearney and regional director Bill Cea outlined some of the more pressing issues facing seniors and retirees in 2010, including the new health care law, the Fiscal Commission and efforts to privatize Social Security.

SC ARA is one of 30 Alliance chapters in the country. To find out more or to get involved, email scalliance@mindspring.com or call 803-957-8740.


Bill Cea


Bob Kearney

Click here to see more photos from the drop-in.