A director fired. A secret recorder. Inside a chaotic day at SC election agency
For the past week, the South Carolina Election Commission has been rocked by chaos and uncertainty. In the midst of a legal battle over whether the state’s voter rolls should be handed over to the federal government, top leadership has been fired.
On Sept. 17, former executive director Howard Knapp was fired by the board. Five days later, former deputy director Paige Salonich was fired from the state election agency. Her firing followed allegations made in internal documents of an aggressive confrontation with her superiors and other staff, as well as claims that she planted a voice-activated digital recording device inside the room where board members debated whether to fire Knapp.
Knapp’s firing and the Salonich’s alleged actions that led to her own termination all played out over the course of a single, sometimes tense day inside of the election commission’s office in downtown Columbia, witnessed in part by a reporter for The State newspaper.
The day after Knapp’s firing, the State Law Enforcement Division was called to investigate a planted recorder. SLED also confirmed an investigation involving Knapp following a request from the Attorney General’s Office in March 2024.
So far, little has been confirmed publicly about the nature of the investigations and whether it is connected to either of the firings.
What happened on Sept. 17?
On Sept. 17, the five-person board of the State Elections Commission had a scheduled meeting at the agency’s office on Lady Street. They met in a conference room, next to the main lobby, on the fifth floor of a shared office building off Main Street in downtown Columbia.
On the board’s agenda for the meeting were the approval of past minutes and new business items, including an accountability report, next year’s budget, voter outreach, upcoming municipal elections and a data request from the Department of Justice. The federal government wants South Carolina’s voter rolls with voters’ personal information. Knapp had been involved in discussions about the request with the Justice Department’s Civil Rights division, which started Aug. 6.
The scheduled 10 a.m. public meeting was already in executive session when a reporter from The State arrived shortly after the start time. The board stayed in executive session, which is closed to the public, for almost five hours.
On the agenda for the executive session were two lawsuits, Trudy Grant v. Howard Knapp, a lawsuit challenging new rules that restrict mail in voting to people 65 and older, and Anne Crook v. S.C. Election Commission, a voter privacy lawsuit trying to stop the commission from sending complete voter rolls to the U.S. Justice Department. It also listed “personnel matters.”
During the closed-door portion of the meeting, Elections staff were seen going in and out of the conference room. Employees, including Salonich, were seen in a waiting room just outside. The mood was sometimes tense.
At times, the chairman of the board of commissioners, Judge Dennis Shedd, could be seen summoning employees into the conference room.
Salonich’s termination letter describes her as having “raised (her) voice at leadership, used profanity, and made disruptive remarks.” Some of these remarks, witnessed by the reporter from The State and described in the letter, included declaring she was being “held hostage” at her own job and that she would “never be a hostage in this (expletive) place again.”
The letter described other employees were “shaken” by the outburst, which included “profane and abusive” language.
That same day, security cameras at the election commission caught Salonich “placing an unauthorized device” inside the conference room, her termination letter said. Sources identified the device to The State as a voice-activated digital recorder. It is unknown at what point Salonich allegedly planted the device.
The election commission’s downtown offices are monitored by video cameras, according to a document visitors are required to sign.
South Carolina is what’s known as a “one-party consent” state, meaning that an individual can record a conversation they are part of without the other participants knowing. But under state and federal law, it is typically a crime to record other people’s conversations without their knowledge.
After the nearly five-hour long executive session with no lunch break, the board of commissioners publicly voted 3-2 to fire Knapp from his $150,000 a year position. Shedd joined board members Clifford Edler and Scott Moseley in voting to remove Knapp. Members JoAnne Day and Linda McCall voted against his removal.
The commission then chose chief of staff Jenny Wooten to serve as interim director.
“The management team consisted of Howie [Knapp], Paige [Salonich], Jenny [Wooten], John Michael [Catalano] and Thomas [Nicholson],” Shedd said during the Sept. 17 meeting. “And I think, after this morning, looking at that, I think Jenny should be considered, just for the interim director.”
Shedd asked Wooten to investigate managerial staff, and named Salonich and director of external affairs John Michael Catalano.
Catalano, who regularly acts as a spokesperson for the agency, said he could not comment on the investigation.
Shedd then provided an update on the Justice Department’s request for the election commission’s voter rolls. Shedd also took a few questions about the voter roll negotiations as staff began filing into the conference room to learn that Knapp had been fired. Some staff appeared visibly surprised afterward. All other items listed on the public agenda, including an accountability report, budget requests and municipal election preparation, went undiscussed.
The days that followed
Less than 24 hours after Knapp was ousted, SLED agents were seen by The State at the election commission’s downtown office on Sept. 18. They retrieved a voice-activated digital recorder, sources told The State. The election commission had requested SLED that day to “investigate allegations of wiretapping,” SLED said.
On the following Monday, Salonich sent the Commission a letter of resignation. In response, the Commission rejected her resignation and instead fired her, according to documents sent to The State.
That same day, Salonich received a letter terminating from her position, which pays $141,788 a year, on Sept. 22.
The agency described her termination as the result of the agency’s “progressive discipline” policy. Such policies are typically a formal series of steps where an employee receives increasingly severe disciplinary measures before they are terminated. However, the letter sent to Salonich did not cite any incidents other than the events of Sept. 17.
Salonich’s attorney, Jim Griffin, told The State earlier this week that she did not wish to comment on the allegations.
This story was originally published September 26, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly reported the arrival time of a reporter at the meeting. The story was updated to reflect the time of the reporter’s arrival at the State Election Commission meeting..