Council votes to disband municipal election commission

The city of Charleston plans to disband its Municipal Election Commission (MEC), handing over its longstanding control of local elections to Charleston County, including certification of results. In many ways, the move, however, is just a formality.

Isaac Cramer, executive director of the county Board of Elections and Voter Registration (BEVR) said the state outlines three options for municipalities for conducting local elections. They can have an city election commission that has full control over the elections. They can transfer everything over to their home county. Or they can have a partial transfer of authority. Currently without an official ordinance, Cramer said, Charleston’s MEC should be on the hook for all election responsibilities.

Charleston City Council voted March 12 to pass the first reading of this proposed ordinance, which would disband the city’s MEC. Councilman Karl Brady was the only member of council to vote no, saying recent election turmoil in Atlantic Beach has triggered disproportionate reactions from county officials.

“Just so we’re clear, we’re not Atlantic Beach, which is one of the municipalities that triggered the state and everybody else to start looking at this,” he said. “To treat the largest municipality in the state similar to smaller towns seems like … trying to kill an ant with a sledgehammer.”

A ‘handshake agreement’

In the past, the county elections board has run local, state and federal elections for every municipality in Charleston County, which includes providing voting equipment, trained staff and Election Day operations. In a few municipalities, including Charleston and towns like Sullivan’s Island, Meggett and Hollywood, the certification process was handled by the municipality’s commission.

But a decision by the BEVR in early March will change that process. Cramer said cities should conduct all aspects of the election without the county’s help, but that hasn’t been the historical practice.

“All this decision is doing is conforming current practices with state law,” he said. “Things had been done this other way as long as anyone can remember, but it’s basically been a handshake agreement. There’s no ordinance in place by the city council for anyone to accept any of these duties.

“If we’re going to conduct the election, provide the poll workers, the setup, all of these aspects that happen during an election, we want to make sure we have actual authority over that election,” he added.

Charleston Mayor William Cogswell said during the March 12 meeting that Charleston would have a lot of work to do before the next election cycle if it wanted to retain its authority over local contests.

“If we don’t move forward with this, we would need to run our own elections, rent election machines, hire staff to do it,” he said.

Cramer is expected to attend the city’s March 26 council meeting to discuss more details related to the county’s decision and the city’s options.