SC Democrats to have army of poll watchers, lawyers to monitor Election Day voting

South Carolina Democrats have assembled a small army of some 1,400 poll watchers and lawyers who will be deployed across the state on Election Day to make sure, they say, that no one interferes with people’s rights to vote.

The Democrats have divided the state into nine different zones, each with its own centralized war room, which they call a “boiler room,” of five to seven lawyers who can be easily reached by the poll watchers on the ground at the 2,256 various precincts around state.

“We’ll be seeing that all eligible voters can vote, and all eligible votes are counted,” said Bill Nettles, a former U.S. attorney who is a senior adviser to more than 250 lawyers involved in the S.C. Democratic Party effort. He will be in the Columbia main nerve center with some 25 other lawyers. Some lawyers will be in the boiler rooms, and others will be at the polls.

In past elections, the party usually deploys cadres of poll watchers and has lawyers standing by. But the scale of this year’s operation is unprecedented, party insiders said.

Everything may go smoothly, but the Democrats want to make sure that if problems arise Tuesday, they will be ready to do everything from help sort out minor issues as well as deal with any serious problems. A minor issue might be something like the voter being in the wrong location or paperwork “not being exactly in order,” Nettles said.

Major issues would involve something like voter intimidation, which can take a number of different forms, Nettles said.

“We’ve seen in the past poll watchers associated with the opposing party just randomly challenging people for no real apparent reason except trying to slow down the process, which results in a longer line, which results in people possibly deciding not to vote,” Nettles said. “That problem, if reported to a regional war room, can be resolved.”

Democrats generally believe that increased turnout benefits their candidates, which is why the party is getting ready for whatever happens next Tuesday. Also, if the U.S. Senate race of Democrat Jaime Harrison against Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham is close, every vote will count.

But Nettles says Democratic efforts are not specifically designed to help their candidates. “We don’t know what lever those people are going to pull when they get in there. We just know they got the right to vote — which is a cornerstone of democracy.”

It’s not just a theoretical matter.

In an elections case in federal court this week, S.C. Election Commission executive director Marci Andino submitted an affidavit in which she admitted that nine of the state’s 46 counties had been — acting on their own — engaged in disqualifying absentee voters’ ballots just because their signatures on those ballots looked different from their earlier signatures. No state law allows counties to disqualify ballots on the basis of mismatched signatures, said Andino.

After hearing Andino’s evidence, U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel earlier this week wrote an order prohibiting S.C. counties from disqualifying ballots because of allegedly mismatched signatures. Any ballots that have been disqualified on that basis must be reviewed anew, Gergel wrote.

Political parties are entitled to have people as watchers at polls, who observe in a non-obtrusive way the voting and the counting processes.

In general elections, each party is allowed to have up to two watchers at a precinct. A party’s watchers represent all candidates on the party’s ticket. A poll watcher must have a letter from the party, be certified by the precinct and wear an identification badge.

“That’s how the election process works, right? It’s supposed to be open, and folks can witness it, because if people don’t have faith in the election, it doesn’t mean anything,” Nettles said.

A spokeswoman for the S.C. Republican Party said Tuesday that the party will reveal its Election Day plans closer to the election.

Up to now, the main Election Day efforts by the state Republican Party have been focused on fighting voting rights lawsuits brought by the state and national Democratic groups.

In those lawsuits, fought out in federal court, Democrats have sought to widen access to the ballot by seeking court-approved measures that would allow all voters to vote absentee, do away with a witness signature requirement and other efforts to broaden the franchise.

Republicans opposed those efforts on several grounds. For example, they fought against allowing an unelected federal judge to make decisions on state voting policy — which happened when a federal district judge ruled that absentee voters did not need a witness signature on their ballots, a decision the U.S. Supreme Court later reversed — and claimed that doing away with a witness signature requirement would jeopardize election security. The U.S. Supreme Court eventually ruled that the federal trial court judge who ruled with the Democrats on doing away with the witness signature requirement had overstepped her authority.

In response to the pandemic, the state Legislature did allow any voter to vote absentee without an excuse. In mid-September, Gov. Henry McMaster signed the “no excuse” absentee ballot law.

This story was originally published October 28, 2020 at 1:57 PM.