SC GOP kills attempt by Midlands Republican group to audit 2020 election
The South Carolina GOP has denied a request for a forensic audit of the November 2020 election in at least one Midlands county that overwhelmingly voted for former President Donald Trump.
On Saturday, the South Carolina Republican Party adopted a resolution encouraging the state Legislature to change how voters cast ballots in future elections, rather than approving the Lexington County Republican Party’s request for a forensic audit of the county’s 2020 presidential election results.
The state party’s executive committee passed a resolution over the weekend encouraging lawmakers to expand voting requirements.
This year, lawmakers debated election-related changes — they included early voting, limiting the number of excused absences to vote absentee and increasing supervision over county offices — but punted debate to next year.
The South Carolina GOP has not to date called for an audit of the 2020 election.
State GOP Chairman Drew McKissick said the State Election Commission made counties audit by hand some precincts to ensure the totals matched the totals reported by vote counting machines. Those totals did not show more votes for Trump, and no errors were found.
In some states, lawmakers have embraced audits after Trump pushed unfounded allegations of widespread voter fraud. That is despite results, like in Arizona, where Biden was found to have won by a wider margin.
In October, some Lexington County GOP members alleged the county delivered an even larger margin for the former president, and they demanded a forensic audit of results to see if votes were potentially flipped.
Trump won South Carolina with more than 55% of the vote to President Joe Biden’s roughly 43%. And of the more than 88,000 voters who cast straight-party tickets in Lexington County, about 69% voted Republican and about 30% voted Democrat.
Craig Caldwell, chairman of the Lexington County Republican Party, declined to comment on the state party’s rejection.
The resolution adopted by the state GOP’s executive committee asks lawmakers to put all county election commissions under the state, reduce the number of excuses people can use to vote by mail, allow for seven days of in-person, early voting and more regularly update voter rolls to remove people who are no longer alive or who have moved.
The party also wants the election commission to do hand recounts of random precincts in each of the state’s 46 counties to ensure the totals match up with the totals produced by the voting machines. And they want audit results posted publicly.
“The one (resolution) we took up is by far superior in what we’re trying to accomplish, and working along with legislation that we know we can get passed and that is quite frankly realistic,” McKissick said. “We’re putting the entire state party behind this and we’ll be working with the members hand in glove to get that done.”
