SC justices scold GOP lawyer for ignoring order

The State
Seanna Adcox

As if it makes a difference.

South Carolina Supreme Court justices on Monday scolded a Republican Party lawyer for appearing to ignore a court order, and weighed whether to boot more candidates from primary ballots just one week before voters go to the polls.

The state high court heard arguments Monday on a case brought by Florence County Democrats. It accuses the county's Republican Party of defying the justices' order last month by certifying candidates for the ballot who had not properly filed economic disclosure papers.

The justices seemed most concerned with the practicality of enforcing their ruling, noting that absentee ballots have already been sent out. A decision could come as early as Tuesday. The primary is June 12. No matter what their ruling, it's expected to result in more lawsuits.

Florence County Democrats contend they obeyed the earlier order, decertifying some candidates as the county's Republican leaders recertified everyone. While the case heard Tuesday involved only Florence County, party leaders in other counties are suspected of doing the same.

Chief Justice Jean Toal chastised GOP attorney Kevin Hall, saying justices are puzzled by his written assurance to the court that the Republican Party carefully followed the May 2 ruling.

"It turns out that's not so. We're disappointed in you and your client," Toal said in an opening statement to Hall. "We feel you've let us down in terms of being straight with the court."

Other justices also pounced. Justice Don Beatty called the Republican attorney's argument creative but foolish, and said the document alleging careful compliance was an insult to the court's intelligence. He believes sanctions are in order.

At issue is a 1991 state law requiring candidates to turn in a "statement of economic interest" - meant to show voters any potential conflicts of interest - when they file their candidacy. The law exempted incumbents at all government levels, who must annually file the forms by April 15. Legislators say the law was written that way to avoid duplication in election years. But it contributed to confusion after a 2010 law required online filing. While the intent was to reduce paperwork, the Legislature didn't match up separate sections of the law pertaining to annual and candidate filing.

ALVIN GREENE WAS HERE: 100% Unverifiable E-Voting in SC's GOP 2012 Primary

BradBlog
Brad Friedman

The voting systems in use for the nation's first three all-important electoral contests in the 2012 primary --- from Iowa to New Hampshire to Saturday's South Carolina Primary --- go from pretty great to intolerably horrible. And then comes Florida, which deserves its very own special category, thereafter.

The "First-in-the-Nation" caucuses in Iowa allowed voters to vote on hand-marked paper ballots, counted by hand in front of the public at the caucus site, with results announced to everyone right then and there before being called in to GOP headquarters and before ballots were move anywhere. The wonderfully transparent system allowed for Republican voters by the Iowa GOP (which they hypocritically fight against allowing for everybody else in other states, and even in their own during general elections) is just about as close as we general get in this country to Democracy's Gold Standard. It's also what allowed reporting errors to be discovered and confirmed by the public after an election with some 122,000 votes counted transparently within an hour or so of polls closing, leading to almost nobody charging "fraud" even though just 34 votes are said to separate first and second place in the certified results of the impossibly, and historically, close election.

As of the "First-in-the-Nation" primary in New Hampshire, however, election transparency for voters and their ability to oversee their own elections began to disappear. While a lucky 10% of voters enjoyed hand-marked, publicly hand-counted paper ballots, the rest of the state's voters were allowed to vote on hand-marked paper ballots, but forced to tolerate secret tabulation on oft-failed, easily-manipulated Diebold optical-scan systems programmed by a company (LHS) with a history of criminal behavior and convictions. The results from those 90% of Granite State voters may have been tallied accurately by the Diebold op-scanners or, as seen in the disastrous 2008 Presidential Primary, not.

Since NH doesn't bother to actually check to see if their machines tallied the hand-marked paper ballots correctly, we're unlikely to ever know if they did --- barring a recount request where, by then, the secure chain of custody of the paper ballots would be uncertain (to put it mildly.)

And now we come to the "First-in-the-South" Republican primary in South Carolina, where all evidence of how voters vote disappears entirely as the voters will be forced across the entire state to vote on easily-manipulated, oft-failed, 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting systems made by the nation's largest voting machine company, ES&S. When the machine-reported results are announced tomorrow night they will either be accurate or not. Either way, there will never be a way for anybody to know one way or the other as there will be nothing to prove how voters voted and nothing to "recount", even if anybody wanted to.

Appropriately enough, perhaps, Saturday's primary in the Palmetto State will offer 100% "faith-based" voting, since it will be scientifically impossible to prove that even a single vote for any candidate on the ballot has been recorded accurately by the ES&S iVotronic touch-screens as per any voter's intent. Known what we mean, Alvin Greene?...