Calls to the SC Election Protection hotline from voters reporting problems came in at nearly one a minute on Election Day.

“We logged a total of 1,034 calls by 8pm,” said SC Election Protection field manager Brett Bursey. “That’s more that double the number made in the 2004 and 2006 election combined.” More than half the calls came in on Election Day. Charleston County led the state with 131 problems reported. Greenville and Richland counties each logged 83 calls, and Spartanburg had 56.

Spartanburg County Election Commission Director Henry Laye was the hardest to reach of the county directors. Laye allowed a Republican poll watcher to challenge black voters’ reasons for voting absentee, which made long lines even longer. On Nov. 4, Spartanburg had some of the longest lines, with voters waiting up to five hours. Two precincts reported people in line three hours after the polls closed.

The National Election Protection Coalition of nonpartisan advocacy groups staffed call centers around the country that logged 43,207 calls. Calls were posted by state on the organization’s web site, and volunteer legal advisors in South Carolina followed up with phone calls to voters to help them resolve problems.

Nearly 200 calls were from voters who were not listed on the poll books. Most were newly registered and never received their cards. Many of these people were turned away and not given the opportunity – as required by law – to vote a provisional ballot.

It was clear from the calls that counties are not consistent in interpreting the election laws. “Counties make their own rules, and laws are what the poll workers think they are,” said one frustrated legal volunteer.

The SC Progressive Network will be holding town meeting across the state to gather citizens’ input on their experiences voting in an effort to our work to pass legislation next session to improve voting procedures and practices in South Carolina. The Network introduced legislation in 2006 for Early Voting Centers and other reforms that would have reduced both the lines and the stress on poll workers. For details on these bills, click here. 

If you have a story to tell about problems voting, please email it to network@scpronet.com. Be sure to include your name, contact information, location of problem and whether it was resolved.

Surprise!

By Becci Robbins

The phones have been ringing steadily in the SC Progressive Network‘s office today. We’ve been working with the national Election Protection Coalition, which is staffing a hotline to provide free legal assistance to voters with problems at the polls. As of 5:30pm, the hotline has logged 36,513 reports, 480 in South Carolina. We will provide details about the reports once we’ve had time to review them and complete follow-up phone calls. For now, suffice it to say that election workers were not prepared to handle the unprecedented turnout.

It’s not like they didn’t know Election Day was coming. The large number of new voters was no surprise, either. So it’s been frustrating to watch the process over the last couple of weeks. The Get Out The Vote work we’d intended to do was delayed because election offices were so backed up that new registrations hadn’t been entered into the database. And the long lines of people trying to vote absentee bordered on abusive, with some waiting more than four hours to cast a ballot.

When I voted yesterday, in Lexington County, the wait was over two hours. The gentleman in front of me was using a cane and, worried that he wouldn’t be able to handle standing for such a long time, I went to see if he could use the curbside machines set aside for folks with physical disabilities. I was told that the person who brought him would have to wait in line, and then the machine would be brought out. He drove himself, I told them, so what was he to do? They said he could take advantage of a wheelchair parked by the front door.

It’s hard to understand why the county was so ill-prepared to deal with the needs of such voters – especially since among the reasons people can vote absentee in South Carolina is if they are disabled or over 65. The problems in Lexington were not isolated, as I watched people drive up for curbside voting in Columbia and, when nobody came out to help them, they drove off without voting. I also watched seniors stack up by the door to the election office, where there were chairs, with nobody coming out to advise them.

Clearly, we can do better. The Network is working to make sure that we do. We plan to revisit legislation we introduced last session to make it easier to vote. (For details on those bills, click here.) And we are going to hold town hall meetings in the coming weeks so South Carolinians can tell their stories and share ideas about how to improve election process in the Palmetto State.

In the meantime, if you had a problem at the polls, please make a report to the Election Protection hotline: 1-866-OUR-VOTE. That data will be used to inform legislative and procedural remedies for future elections.

Finally, thanks to everyone who volunteered today and in the days leading up to the election. Thanks, too, to all the voters who braved long lines to vote. Let’s hope that sort of faith in democracy is contagious.

With a half-million new voters added to the rolls in South Carolina since the last presidential election, election officials are predicting record numbers turning out to vote on Nov. 4. Help cut congestion at the polls by taking advantage of South Carolina’s provision for “in-person absentee” voting.

To vote in-person absentee, you must be a registered voter and meet one of the following criteria:
• Students, their spouses and dependents residing with them
• Members of the Armed Forces, Merchant Marines, Red Cross, USO, government employees, their spouses and dependents residing with them
• For reasons of employment will not be able to vote on election day
• Physically disabled persons
• Persons on vacation
• Persons age 65 or older
• Persons admitted to the hospital as emergency patients on day of election or at least four days prior to the election
• Electors with a death or funeral in the family within 3 days before the election
• Persons attending sick or physically disabled persons
• Persons serving as jurors in a state or federal court on election day
• Certified poll watchers and poll managers

You may vote in-person absentee at your county voter registration office until 5pm on Nov. 3. For more details on voting, or to find your registration office, visit the SC Election Commission’s web site.

If you encounter problems while voting, please call the toll-free hotline for assistance: 1-866-OUR-VOTE. You will be provided free legal assistance, and your report will help provide a record to help election workers address weaknesses in the system and avoid problems in the future.

The Richland County Voter Registration office needs volunteers on Saturday, Oct. 18, to help enter registration information at its office at 2020 Hampton St. in downtown Columbia. The great work that everyone has done in Richland has left the election office swamped. We can’t start our Get Out The Vote drive until we have all the folks entered in the system.

Volunteers are needed from 9am until 5pm. Call the Missing Voter Project‘s John Dawkins at 803-467-1981 if you can help, even if it’s just for an hour or two.

At the urging of the SC Progressive Network, state legislators have requested that SC Attorney General Henry McMaster issue an opinion on the state statute regulating emergency ballots at polling places.

“After the failure of many of the voting computers in Horry County during the January Republican presidential primary, where many voters were turned away from the polls, we found that no law requires precincts to have emergency paper ballots,” said Network Director Brett Bursey. Horry County election official Lisa Bourcier reported that “80-90 percent” of the county’s more than 300 machines malfunctioned. Voters in many of the county’s 118 precincts were told to come back later, on a cold and rainy day, because emergency paper ballots ran out shortly after the polls opened and the machines failed to operate.

Rep. Tracy Edge, a McCain campaign official, reported that his mother-in-law was only the 12th person to vote in her precinct, and that she was given a blank piece of paper because they didn’t have emergency ballots. State Election Commission spokesperson Chris Whitmire was widely quoted as telling people to vote on “paper towels” if necessary.

Section (A) of 7-13-430 of the state law used to read: “There must be provided for each voting place where voting machines are used as many ballots as are equal to ten percent of the registered qualified voters at the voting place.” The statute was amended in 2000 to read: “There must be provided for each voting place where voting machines are used a number of ballots not to exceed ten percent of the registered qualified voters at the voting place.”

Sen. Phil Leventis, along with Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter and Rep. James Smith, requested that the Attorney General issue an opinion on the statute. “Our switch to electronic voting statewide in 2004 accentuates the need for a back-up system of paper ballots,” Leventis said. “The current statute has no minimum number of emergency ballots required, and does not protect our right to cast a ballot in the event of machine failure.” Leventis was opposed to the state’s purchase of the touch-screen computers that do not produce a durable, and voter-verifiable, paper ballot that can be used to verify a recount.

Beaufort County’s early voting was stymied on Oct. 6 when its computers failed to come online due to an incorrect password. The problem was detected Oct. 4 and not resolved until the afternoon of the 6th. The county blamed the State Election Commission for providing the wrong password. The SEC said Beaufort County election officials were to blame.

Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler recently called for emergency paper ballots to be used in case of long lines to vote on machines. Maryland, one of only three states (Georgia and Delaware) using paperless computer voting machines like those in South Carolina, has decided to dump the computers in 2010 and switch to an optical scan system that uses paper ballots that can be hand marked if the machines malfunction, or the electricity is off.

In Pennsylvania, voting rights advocates are pushing the Secretary of State to change his ruling that emergency ballots will not be used unless all the machines in a precinct fail, urging the paper ballots be distributed if half the machines aren’t working.

After the Horry County machine failure, State Republican Party Chair Kayton Dawson told CNN that he was confident of a “full and fair count” and noted that “there is always a back-up in case of a machine malfunction and a ballot can’t be cast.”

Leventis said, “Actually, there is no mandated back-up in case of machine failures, and that is why we have taken this matter to the Attorney General.”

“This Nov. 4 we expect to see record numbers of voters,” Bursey said. “If machines fail, as they have in the past, we shouldn’t have to rely on paper towels to insure that every vote counts.”

By Elke Kennedy
Sean’s Last Wish

This week, Americans are mourning the 10-year observance of the tragic murder of Matthew Shepard. It’s hard for any of us to relive the memories — a promising 21-year-old college student beaten to death and tied to a fence outside of Laramie, Wyo., just because he was gay.

Harder still for me. Watching the coverage of this high-profile case, I could not foresee that a similar tragedy would happen in my own family a few years later.

On May 16, 2007, my son Sean Kennedy was leaving a bar in Greenville. A car with three boys in it was parked outside the door, and one of them called Sean over, asking him for a cigarette. Sean gave him one and was walking away when Stephen Andrew Moeller got out, approached my son and called him anti-gay epithets. He punched him in the face, and Sean fell to the ground.

Sean’s murderer got back into the car and left my son dying there. A little later, he left a message on Sean’s friend’s phone: “You tell your faggot friend that when he wakes up he owes me $500 for my broken hand.” When I got to the hospital, the doctors told me that Sean’s injuries were not survivable because his brain had separated from his brain stem. Sean was pronounced brain dead at 11:20 that evening. He loved music, was happy with who he was and stood up for what he believed in. He wanted to be a Web designer. He was only 20 years old.

As hard as the stories of Matthew and Sean are to hear, they represent only two out of hundreds of violent incidents targeting gay and transgender people across the country.

Sadly, South Carolina’s absence of any hate crimes law makes gay and transgender residents more susceptible targets of such crimes. The FBI’s 2006 reporting found that 16 percent of hate crimes were based on sexual orientation — even more than crimes based on ethnicity or national origin. (South Carolina does not identify or track hate crimes statistics, so they are not included in national statistics.)

It is inexcusable in 2008 that South Carolina remains one of only five states in the country that does not have a hate crimes law. Tragically coincidental is the fact that Wyoming, where Matthew was murdered in 1998, also is among those five.

On June 11, Stephen Andrew Moeller was given a three-year sentence for Sean’s murder. Since he received credit for days served before he was released on bond, he will have to serve only 10 months in prison before he is eligible for parole. This shockingly short sentence sends the message that it is OK to attack and kill people just because you don’t like who they are. Justice was not done for my son.

Sean’s murder was not considered a hate crime because there is no such thing in our state. Every single one of our members of Congress also voted against the national Matthew Shepard Act, claiming that our state could handle these types of cases without federal laws. But this was certainly not so in Sean’s case.

We need a federal law to protect gay and transgender people such as Sean, but South Carolina can’t wait while Congress keeps stalling on an inclusive act and more young people like Sean are murdered. We must act now.

However, just changing our laws is not enough. We must change hearts and minds, and we must work together by embracing diversity, supporting and standing with each other and speaking out.

After Sean’s death, I founded Sean’s Last Wish (www.seanslastwish.com) to work on educating the public about the gaps in the law and the lack of protection. We educate about how bullying, intolerance, hatred and violence lead to these senseless crimes, and we provide information and resources about how everyone can help prevent hate crimes.

It’s time to honor Matthew’s and Sean’s legacies by sending this strong message: Bullying, hatred and violence have no place in our hearts, homes, churches, states and countries. No mother should ever have to bury her child. No mother should ever lose her child to hate and violence. No mother should ever have to fight for justice for her child.

866-OUR-VOTE Hotline Set Up in South Carolina

The SC Progressive Network is once again organizing nonpartisan election protection work to ensure that all eligible voters’ ballots count in the upcoming election. In the past two general elections, we responded to calls to the 866-OUR-VOTE toll-free hotline set up for voters to call if they had problems at the polls. The hotline received over 500 calls.

While most of the calls were from confused voters, some reported incidents of voter intimidation and efforts at vote suppression. Some calls were referred to SLED or the Justice Department. We were able to deal with most problems by having a volunteer call the voter. With the assistance of volunteer attorneys and informed volunteers, we were able to dispatch someone directly to most of the problem precincts.

We are assembling a directory of attorneys and informed volunteers willing to respond to calls for help in their county on Election Day. While most problems can be resolved by telephone, some require going to the problem precinct.

We need help on Nov. 4 and in the days leading up to the election. Election Protection Volunteers (not necessarily attorneys) are needed to deliver signs to the county election boards for placement in the precincts, to monitor the operation of the voting computers and to report problems at the precincts. A South Carolina Legal Manual prepared by the Election Protection Coalition is available to volunteers that answers a wide range of election-related questions.

This is a nonpartisan effort. Participants can neither support or oppose candidates, and must offer assistance regardless of voters’ party affiliation.

To volunteer, please contact Brett Bursey at 803-808-3384 or network@scpronet.com. We will need your contact information, your hours of availability and services you are offering. Your information will be shared only with coordinators of the Election Protection coalition. There will be a volunteer training by conference call.

For details on the Election Protection coalition click here.

The State picked up part of the SC Progressive Network‘s recent press release on the confusion over ex-offenders’ voting rights. It’s tacked onto the end of this piece about student voting.

*********************

Student voters face barriers –
Geography, rules complicate process for college youth

By Wayne Washington

They have provided much of the passion in this presidential race. They have put up signs, answered phones, swamped campaign Internet sites and sworn to be there for their candidate on Election Day.

But past elections show college students can be an unreliable voting group. Part of the reason is confusion about whether they can vote in the county where they attend school. Or, others say, it’s the hassle of having to cast an absentee ballot.

“The enthusiasm of the campaign runs into the reality of voting by absentee ballot or even remembering to vote,” said Blease Graham, a political science professor at the University of South Carolina. “There are a lot of potential barriers.”

College students, of course, are not all residents of the place where they attend classes. Typically, large colleges enroll students from across the country.

Elections, however, are local functions, administered by local officials. Different localities have different rules, further complicating things for students.

Chris Whitmire, public information officer for the S.C. State Election Commission, said students have three choices when it comes to how they vote.

If they already are registered to vote in another place, they can contact election officials there to request an absentee ballot.

In addition to voting by absentee ballot, students can return to their hometowns to vote. However, students do have a third option — changing their place of residence so they can vote in the county where they attend college.

But that can be a little tricky, Whitmire said. “You have to know the address of your dorm,” Whitmire said. “They can’t use a post office box. They have to put you in the right district.”

Students who want to change their place of residence and vote in South Carolina have until Saturday to do so. There is no required length of residency.

Whitmire said information on the state Election Commission’s Web site could answer other questions students might have about registering and voting.

OTHERS CONFUSED TOO

Students aren’t the only ones who may be confused about their voting rights. Many with criminal records, especially those who have been incarcerated, often wrongly think they forever forfeit their right to vote.

Felons and those who have broken the state’s elections laws are not eligible to vote until they complete the terms of their legal punishment.

The state Election Commission recently sent county officials a memo outlining how such voters can cast ballots. First, they have to re-register with county voting officials by submitting a registration application. County officials then determine whether the potential voter meets eligibility requirements.

Local election boards can ask for proof that the voter’s legal punishment has been completed, though that proof is not required by law.

In a recent study, the S.C. chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union found 36 S.C. counties require proof that legal punishment has been completed.

“If additional proof is not required by law, the state Election Commission should be advising the counties not to require proof that an offender has completed a sentence,” said Brett Bursey, director of the S.C. Progressive Network, a social and economic advocacy group. “This added requirement burdens the 18,000 citizens a year who have paid their debt to society, and may result in them not voting.”