In this episode of Frogmore Stew, Grace Cowan discusses voting and election reforms in South Carolina with Isaac Cramer, Executive Director of the Charleston County Board of Elections, and John Michael Catalano from the South Carolina State Election Commission. The conversation highlights voting registration processes, challenges of absentee and early voting, election security, and potential reforms to improve voter turnout. Isaac emphasizes the need for minimizing the number of elections to combat voter fatigue. John discusses the importance of maintaining election integrity, particularly amidst growing concerns of electoral fraud. The episode underscores the significance of participation and ensuring one's voter information is current before upcoming elections.

00:00 Introduction to Frogmore Stew

00:30 Importance of Voting and Registration

00:58 Interview with Isaac Kramer: Election Reforms

01:51 Challenges and Improvements in Election Administration

03:05 Understanding the State Election Structure

03:38 Day-to-Day Operations of Election Officials

05:20 Early Voting and Absentee Ballots

07:59 Security Concerns and Voter Trust

13:02 Voter Registration and Participation

23:41 Interview with John Michael Catalano

30:51 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Copyright 2024 Grace Cowan

• The Alliance Coalition - South Carolina
• All Things Frogmore Stew
• SC Votes - South Carolina Election Commission
• The Poets of Rhythm - "South Carolina

Hi, it's Grace, and this is Frogmore Stew. We do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participates. That is one of my favorite quotes by Thomas Jefferson. If you haven't yet registered to vote, it's been extended until October the 14th. All you need is your South Carolina driver's license or DMV motor vehicles ID.

You also can get a South Carolina voter registration card with a photo at any of the early voting locations. You could also use your US ID. military I. D. or a U. S. passport, but you must be registered. Today, I have Isaac Kramer. Isaac is the executive director for the Charleston County Board of Elections. Hi, Isaac.

Hey, thanks for having me.

You've been pivotal in advocating for some election reforms in the state. When you came to your job, what was the state of elections and what are some of the reforms that you are passionate about?

We just came out of 2020, which rocked the election administration across the country, not just South Carolina. And COVID really opened the door to prove that we can do early voting. So voting without an excuse, it was actually something the state association of election officials have been advocating for decades. And the pandemic actually opened up. um, our legislature's eyes to seeing that counties can handle this large influx of voters and able to do it effectively and efficiently. So in 2021, really started to push early voting as the means by which we would see voting increase. So we had absentee voting. It's a very cumbersome process.

Quite frankly, it was just a clerical nightmare for election officials. We would be processing people to vote in person, and you have to print out an application, and they sign it, and you keep this piece of paper. And we're like, something's got to change on that front. In 22, I'm very proud of the early voting bill that was passed, cleared both the House and Senate with Nobody voting against it.

So very proud of that. Now there's some things in the bill that I'm not insanely thrilled about, but there were things that we needed to address with elections and this was a good step in the right direction. There's still a lot of reform, maybe in South Carolina. Voter fatigue and election official fatigue is at the top of that list. We have way too many elections. There's a motto says, if it's a Tuesday, there's an election going on in the state. We don't want to have elections where we have 3 percent turnout. That's not a good representation of voting in this country.

And you mentioned the state election commission. Can you give us an overview of what this state election structure is in South Carolina?

We have boards of elections and the top of that is the state election commission. We don't have a secretary of state that runs elections in South Carolina. Other states have that. So the state election commission supervises. The conduct of elections at the county level.

So then each county basically runs their own election and you're the executive director for the Charleston County Board of Elections. What is your job basically on a day to day basis?

So I like to say we are event planners. I want everyone to think about a wedding because that's the best analogy I have. Okay. You have to make sure you have the venue, you have to make sure you have the people coming. You gotta make sure all of that is in place. And in elections, we actually have, for November, we have 104 wedding events happening at the same time. And then you have early voting on top of that. But all the preparation that goes into it is not the day before, it's a year, it's two, three years in advance. So we're in charge of hiring all the poll workers, training all the poll workers.

Making sure all the logistics of our polling places are there. We're doing security assessments, we're doing accessibility assessments. We're also dealing with the general public. We're answering questions on voter registration, absentee voting, early voting. On top of that, We have to ensure that our voter registration efforts, community outreach, I would say, we're in the community.

That's one of my missions is to make sure we let people know about the election process. We have, what, a new person moving into Charleston County every minute. Uh, those are people coming from different states, different laws, and they may not know about how voting works here. And then the other massive piece now in election administration is security. We have to prepare every piece of equipment, make sure there are proper orders. We have a whole regimen that we do for security of our voting system, and then also when we deploy them out. So yeah, we're, our hands are always in the thick of it, planning.

You were saying earlier on some of the election reform after COVID. What are the pieces that you wish had been added to that bill?

One of the things that we had talked about at a bigger level is early voting. We did not foresee that tabulation of the early voting results would be actually an issue. It used to be in person absentee, so we could start running those ballots election morning. But with early voting, the state had said, we can't do that anymore. We had to wait till 7 p. m. And for Charleston County, that's going to be over 120, 000 early votes that we have to tabulate at 7 p. m. And it's not just you press a button and it's boom, done. Every piece of equipment that has thousands of votes.

Takes a lot of time to close down your polling place. Probably only have 800 votes on it. Maybe a thousand. Maybe some are gonna have 2000, but every voting piece of equipment is gonna have 6,000 to 10,000. So the time to do that and then upload those results takes a lot. So, one of the things we asked the legislature was, Hey, can we amend this so we can start it during absentee, which is election morning? That way you have timely results. And at 7 p. m., all we have to do is upload the results of the state, and right there you're gonna have 50 to 60 percent of the vote already tabulated and reported.

So the different ways that you can vote as of right now are, you can do early voting, which is where you show up to a location, Use the equipment and actually vote in person, or you can vote absentee, meaning you print out a form, you fill it out, and then you send it in.

The one difference, and this is something that is new from that law, the state election commission, Interpreted the request for an absentee ballot can only be made in person or by mail or by phone before you could send an email and we could send you an application via email, the return application via email, the state said no, that can't happen anymore. That was a interpretation of the state election commission updating their policy.

We had a guest on a guy named Bradley Tusk, who is. He created a platform to vote by mail, and he mentioned that we were one of his test states for voting using your mobile phone. And we were one of the test states for overseas military and also for some disabled voters. Do you ever see that becoming an additional way to vote in the state of South Carolina? Is that something that you would be open to?

I just think in the current climate, that's not going to happen. There's a lot of security concerns and with the testing of those platforms, there would have to be a huge investment in making sure those systems don't have the ability to be hacked or manipulated because right now our voting system. It's not connected to the internet, and that's something that I always point to. I think you just open another vulnerability, potentially, if you have this widespread online voting.

Maybe 10 years ago, when I first came into elections, I was a lot younger, and I was optimistic. I was a young guy, and I was like, wow, this is amazing. We can vote on our iPads, and this is phenomenal. And then all the security concerns came out of those things. Once we can get that handled and a lot of those threats mitigated, I think we're a little bit away from opening that up.

You brought up an interesting point of security, and I feel like that becomes a little bit political. People talking about election suppression. That, to me, is what one of your biggest accomplishments was bringing early voting to South Carolina and allowing counties to process the absentee ballots ahead of election day. Would you say that there's more that we can still do on ensuring that everyone registers to vote and actually goes to the polls?

Absolutely. I want to make it very clear right now. We live in the United States of America. We have the best elections in the world. Everyone listening knows that. Our adversaries are actively trying to undermine our elections.

Yeah.

Anytime you hear something about fraud, or rigging, or hacking, that should send an alarm bell to you that somebody is trying to undermine the United States of America. Patriotism, I know that has connotations to it. But the idea that the United States of America has a system by which we vote that is on the, people say on the verge of third world countries or countries where there's massive fraud, where people are actually stuffing ballot boxes, that elections are being won with 90 percent of the vote.

That's where the problems are. And our adversaries, they're trying to get that message to the American people that our elections are not to be trusted. And that should be a red flag. That's Because I can tell you right now that the mass conspiracy around elections is a lie. We do so much testing. I've told our poll workers that you're part of this process too. People are attacking the election process. They're actually attacking you as well. These claims people are making, you're in on it too, because that's what makes elections so great in the United States. We're not centralized. We are decentralized, which means things are run differently in every state. The laws are different.

The counties, we have municipalities that run elections in other states. It's at the township level. You're talking about a system where every polling place, it's its own location on election day. They have to follow the laws, they got to ensure the integrity of the process. So, I want to get that real quick, because I think what is happening is voter suppression is also in the form of people being disengaged from the voting process due to The idea that our elections are not free and fair. People are discouraged, they're like, my vote doesn't actually count, because they're just changing the vote. That is not true. I had a local party come in 2022 into our office and watched every ballot open and scan. That night, I had that party shake my hand and said, this election was full of integrity, you guys did a great job.

And I'm going to tell you something, That is the norm of what happens. That's not just a one off, that's what happens every election. So the messaging out there to people, like, don't trust the mail. Now you're disenfranchising elderly and physically disabled voters who can't make the polling place. In 2020, we had people not cast a ballot because of the messaging that vote by mail was fraud. It's not true. Now, are there issues that could happen? Sure. But we have the safeguards in place to ensure that the proper laws are followed. And we want voters to have faith in that. Voter suppression starts with the messaging, we need to trust our elections. So that's the first piece. The second piece to that, you're going to see more people engaged in voting when we have less special elections.

I just am 100 percent huge proponent of this. We have so many special elections in Charleston County. We'll have a state house seat with 3 percent people show up or a special municipal election where 5 percent of people show up. So are there ways to improve our election system? Yes, and some of it will be political, but I think even the primary system. Can be looked at, but we have runoffs that occur two weeks after an election. You're not going to get a lot of people showing up for a runoff. It's just the statistics don't support that. I really want to make sure that our voters have the ability to pass their ballots, but we need to make it easier for them by not having so many different elections.

So do you think that we could ever see. Voter registration at the DMV.

So we actually do in South Carolina, you can register to vote at the DMV. It's actually an opt out. So you're automatically opted in unless you select a box. I, I just happened to meet when I was getting my real ID and I got to test it out myself. But yeah, there's a question that says your address will be updated for voter registration, unless you check this box. And that's a relatively new thing because previously, The DMV was actually required to opt in, and as we studied the legislation, The election officials at the state level, and the legislature said this too, is like state law doesn't actually have an opt in, it's an opt out.

So if you go to DMV, that's the easiest way to do it, and by far, it's the number one way of which we get people registered to vote. In South Carolina, it's through DMV and it's through online voter registration, so if your ID is up to date, you went to DMV, all the information is correct, you can easily go to sevotes. gov. And actually update your voter registration right there.

And once you get your new driver's license or your state ID, and you don't hit the opt out. Are you mailed a voter registration card?

Basically, every week we get a file from the DMV of people who have registered. So it's about five business days or so that you should be getting something in the mail, sometimes a little bit longer. But the easiest way to do this is go to sevotes. gov and pull up your voter profile. If it's up to date in the system, you'll be getting your card soon. If it's not up to date, recommend you call our office to ensure.

And if, for any county, not just Charleston, call your county board of elections, make sure they got that DMV application because sometimes voters inadvertently do check the box to opt out and we want to ensure that you are vote ready ahead of election day. And that's my message right now is be vote ready. Don't wait the week before the election to ensure your information is up to date. Do it now. That way you won't have any problems on November 5th or during early voting.

Let's walk through the different ways. that people can vote in some specific categories. If you want to register online, you must have a South Carolina driver's license or ID. Is that right?

That's correct. You have to have the license or a DMV ID.

So let's say you are a college student that is living in Charleston County or in the state of South Carolina. And You don't have a South Carolina driver's license because you still live with your parents technically, but you want to vote in South Carolina. Are you able to do that?

Yes, you are. They're allowed to vote at their address in South Carolina.

So how would they register to vote?

On sevotes. gov, if you click the register to vote page. Um, on the site there's actual form you can download and you can mail that. The county board for us in Charleston is voterregistration at charlestoncounty. org. You just download that form, fill it out, and email it to us. That's the easiest way to do it.

You don't have to snail mail it.

No, you do not. So we can do things digital. We're going to try to do that to help outer voters.

Okay, so you can register without a South Carolina ID, but then to actually go and vote, you must have a South Carolina ID.

Or passport. If you have a U. S. passport. As a college student, that's good enough to go vote or military ID works, but your passport is 100 percent an official piece of documentation to go and vote. We have election day, but we also have early voting. I can think of our colleges, downtown Charleston, the main library is an early voting site. Get to the main library, get a photo ID. We can make one for you there. And that's one of the things I love about early voting. Is a lot of things that we can do on election day.

We've talked about the three pieces of ID that you need to, when you go to vote, once you're registered. And that's a driver's license from South Carolina, an ID card from South Carolina, or a passport. What are the other two?

So you got the driver's license, the SCDMV ID card, the South Carolina registration. So the ones that we give out, that would be the third. Fourth is the military and the fifth is the state.

A lot of talk right now is around mail in voting. Let's say, for whatever reason, you're not going to be able to do early voting. Are, are there any stipulations on mail in voting?

There actually are. So, first is, people that are 65 and older and people with physical disabilities always can vote by mail absentee for the rest of your life. You just need to call. Come in person, send a thing in the mail, best way is probably just call us. We'll get you an application, call the first of the year, and we'll get you applications for all elections that year. That's something that is a pro tip. If you're working on election day, you just have to be not available during the early voting period. So if you're in a different state working, if your job doesn't allow you to be available early voting or on election day, they can vote by mail.

So if you are taking care of a loved one or somebody on election day and you can't vote during the early voting hours, you can vote by mail. I want to give this one that's, Not really well known. I actually framed a letter to the editor from a voter who said I was admitted to the hospital And I didn't have a right to vote and he was really upset And I framed that on there because actually there was a provision in law that would allow him to vote if you're a person who is Admitted to the hospital as an emergency patient On the day of the election or within a four day period for the election, you qualify for getting an absentee ballot. We can actually do something really special for them to get them an absentee ballot. And then lastly, and most importantly, we talked about military and overseas voters, they can vote absentee and the law gives them a little bit of a special provision as well where they can vote by email. Those would be the reasons to vote absentee.

In Charleston County, there are over 320, 000 registered voters. Do you know how many eligible unregistered voters there are?

I think Charleston County has over 425 or 440, 000. population. So I think we're at probably 75 to 80 percent registration rate. My biggest concern is the people that have moved within the county that haven't updated their voter registration. And here's what happens. Those people show up on election day to vote. Now, they're going to vote a provisional ballot, and that's what we want to eliminate. We don't want them to face an issue. I'm very pro vote centers, uh, where we can get big buildings, lots of people, lots of equipment, and you don't have to vote at your assigned polling place on election day. We did a study in 2014 or 2015. Most people would be in favor of a system where they can vote somewhere convenient to them on election day.

So basically you would just give your voter registration and your ID and then it would pull out the ballot that's specific to you in the neighborhood that you live.

It works in early voting 100John Catalano. It's convenient. People love it. And anybody can vote early in Charleston County as long as you're registered. Anywhere. So if you live in Mount Pleasant and you're downtown running errands, vote downtown. If you live on James Island. And you're going to be in West Ashley, go to West Ashley.

That's huge. I had no idea that was the case. I always thought there was like a specific place. That's amazing. And so if you had a magic wand and you could change any possible one thing right now about the voting, what would it be?

South Carolina has got to go to a model of three election dates a year. Other states do this. When I talked to other colleagues across the country, they're like, what? How many elections? I honestly believe that. The turnover election officials in the state, yes, there's threats and harassment. Yes, we're on scrutiny like no other, but our election poll workers are also burnt out. So, but wave the magic wand, South Carolina goes to a coordinated election schedule where we have three dates and we will have more availability of polling places as well. Just think about this. We have to ask polling locations to, in essence, be on hold. For 52 days a year, that's just not realistic.

I think one of my takeaways here is that you have done a lot to make voting a much easier process. To make it easy to actually register, make it easy to actually go and vote, do it in advance on your time. But this is our primary job as American citizens, is to ensure that we vote in every election. Whether it's three a year or even 11 a year, we need to all be participating. So here's my last question, Isaac, I've heard that you are a Taylor Swift fan. What's your era?

We went to Zurich this summer to see her. My wife, uh, surprised her for her 10 year anniversary. And for Christmas, I got her tickets. And it was amazing. I will say that I gotta go speak now. Oh, okay. That brings back the most memories to me.

I'm more of the lover era. That's my jam.

That's new stuff.

I know. I like it. I like her new stuff.

I love her music. And politics aside of anything, that's how my wife and I, like, really hit it off.

My husband had to take, I took one daughter, he took the other, and he went to the merch booth while the show was happening because he was like, I'm gonna go, this is when there's not gonna be a line. And he met another dad there, and they exchanged bracelets. So I feel like he got the full experience.

Got the full experience for doing bracelets.

Isaac, I really appreciate you being on. This has been super informative and really helpful. There's so many great things that you're doing and I hope you'll come back on and keep us updated.

Yeah, I will. And just as a preview, we have a children's book. Being released on October 16th for the next generation talk about voting and the importance of Respecting each other even when we disagree. I'm very excited about the message of the book.

That's amazing All right, let us know how we can support you and I will definitely have you back on very soon. So great to talk to you

I am sitting with John Michael Catalano, who is the public information officer for the South Carolina State Election Commission. Hi, John. Welcome to Frogmore's Tube.

Hey, thanks so much for having me. I'm really happy to be here.

I'm so thankful that you made time for us. This is such a crazy week. You've had a lot going on.

Yeah, on Friday, the voter registration deadline was extended due to Hurricane Helene. It's been a little bit hectic at our office, but we're hanging in there.

And one of the things that I found interesting, maybe you can explain the process, is that had to go through the court system versus another route. Is that typical for most states or are we an unusual state because of that?

I couldn't speak for other states, but really with any election rules, it does tend to vary by state to state. So I don't think this is too unusual though, because typically voter registration deadlines come from a state law. So that means either the General Assembly or the lawmakers have to make a change or have to go through the courts. Okay.

And one of the things we talked to Isaac Kramer about is each county has their own set up in election process. But overall, the state is overseen by an election commission.

Most states are We'll have their elections run through the Secretary of State's office, which is a partisan office in South Carolina. Instead, we have a nonpartisan state election commission, which I'm a part of. And, I'm biased, but I think it's a better way to do elections because you're removing that partisan aspect from elections.

Sure, yeah.

And we do have procedures, rules, regulations that all counties have to follow, but counties basically go about it in different ways on how to follow those rules and procedures and things like that.

Got it. And are there any reforms? Isaac talked to us about some of the things that he had worked on and things that he'd like to still see happen. And one thing that he mentioned was how many elections we have in South Carolina. If it's Tuesday, there's an election going on somewhere.

It's a joke, but it's really probably pretty accurate. Just about every Tuesday, there is some sort of election going on. Um, a lot of people think election officials work twice every four years, and it's just not the case. We're actually putting on elections just about every week.

Are there any reforms, like, in an ideal world that if you could, Implement whatever you wanted that you would put in place to make voting easier, better, have more of a turnout.

I don't have anything that comes to the top of my mind. I can't tell you that our election system and infrastructure is perfect, but I can tell you it's among the best in the country. Our processes and procedures strike a fine balance between accessibility and security. And that's really what it's all about. You need to have the election system. open to anyone who wants to actually vote and is qualified, but you also need to have it secure enough to where it's not going to be interfered with or anything like that. And there needs to be credibility with it as well. So I think we've done a pretty good job here in South Carolina.

We had a guy named Bradley Tuscon a couple of weeks ago who has created a mobile voting system and it's essentially a vote by phone and he's really outselling it. He's written a book about how this will change. voting because it will be accessible to everyone. Is that something that you guys would even consider?

I can't tell you, I've got the exact pulse of the general assembly under my thumb, but I would be shocked if something like that happened in South Carolina anytime soon. And a lot of it's based out of concerns about the integrity of elections, not just in South Carolina, but nationwide. I'm sure we've all seen all kinds of crazy things said about elections. The thing that we really like about our voting system and our election infrastructure are these paper ballots that come with, no matter how you vote, whether it's absentee or whether it's in person, you're getting handed a piece of paper and can go back and audit and check. So basically, there are concerns that the voting system's not counting accurate votes.

We've got receipts of all the votes, and I think that goes a long way to addressing people's concerns about, election integrity. We do have a secure way of getting ballots electronically to military and overseas voters because federal law tells us that we have to do that. So it can be done on a small scale because we do it now for military and overseas voters, but I guess we would just need to know more specifics of exactly how that works. How this system works and how can we audit it to ensure people trust the results that come from it.

For sure. I think the main thing that we're just stressing from now through the 14th is that you still have time to register to vote. The easiest way to do it is go to sdvotes. gov. It takes less than five minutes to get everything up to date and make sure you're squared away for November. And then number two is at least just check your voter registration to ensure it's a correct address. Especially if you've had to move recently, like me, I moved recently from Richland County to Lexington County, making sure that my address is up to date. Before the voter registration deadline to ensure I don't have any problems on election day.

What happens if your address on your driver's license doesn't match your new address that you've registered to vote? Does that matter?

So if you're already registered to vote at your new address, and you've got your address up to date with the DMV, they don't require you to get a new actual physical copy of your ID. I'm actually a perfect example of this. My ID currently says my old address in Richland. My voter registration address has been updated to my new address. But it just doesn't have that updated address on my physical copy. That's not required for you to go vote on election day. So when poll managers are checking that ID, they're really looking, one, to make sure it's valid.

But two, that picture that's on the ID, they're making sure the person standing in front of them matches. And then ultimately, if you have a reasonable impediment to getting one of these IDs, you can actually sign an affidavit at the polling place, swearing you are who you say you are. You'll get issued a provisional ballot, which will have all the same contents as a standard ballot. And then that ballot will kill as long as somebody doesn't come to the county office and proves that you're lying about who you say you are.

What's the weirdest question anyone has ever asked you about voting?

Oh my gosh, I think the questions that we've been getting recently that are coming out of left field that, because they've been happening in all other election offices too, but there was this great Concern that non US citizens have been registering to vote. That's not true. We've got all kinds of information and state laws to show that's not happening here. And if it does happen, we can identify them, report them to authorities and everything like that. I'd say that has been just the most. odd trend this year is just almost daily, people reaching out with these real concerns about this.

But one of the reasons that I think it's so important for us to really talk about this is because I think there are so many people from other states with out of state IDs that may have not gone to the DMV. And if you don't want to go to the DMV, you can go somewhere else just to get a regular state ID before you get the whole driver's license thing redone. I think that's a great option for sure. It's so great to talk to you and I really appreciate you making time for us. The election's almost here!

Yeah. Thank you so much.

That's all the stew for today. Talk to you next week.

Frogmore stew Podcast is written and hosted by Grace Cowan. Editing and IT support by Eric Johnson. Produced by TJ Phillips with the Podcast Solutions Network.