With almost 3,000 absentee ballots already cast, the state Senate is debating legislation that would cancel the state’s June 9 congressional primary elections and hold them under new district lines later this summer.
Under the bill, South Carolina voters would still head to the ballot box on June 9 to cast their primary picks for U.S. Senate, governor, other state constitutional offices and S.C. House races as planned. Congressional primaries, though still on the June 9 ballot, would not be counted. A different primary would then be held in August.
Republicans have said that the last-minute redistricting effort, which passed the House in the early morning hours of May 20, is designed to give GOP candidates an opportunity to sweep all seven of the state’s congressional races this November by gerrymandering 17-term U.S. Rep. James Clyburn out of his 6th district seat.
“President Trump decisively won in South Carolina not once, not twice, but three times and Republicans have dominated statewide elections for many years,” bill sponsor Rep. Luke Rankin, R-Laurens, said prior to the vote. “It’s completely reasonable for the people that elected us here to expect that we send a full 7-0 delegation to Washington, D.C.”
Senate leader is foe
The bill is now facing tougher obstacles in the S.C. Senate, where Majority Leader Shane Massey, R-Edgefield, has emerged as one of its most potent foes.
In a May 12 floor speech, Massey argued the redistricting proposal would put the state’s six safe GOP seats at risk by dispersing Democratic voters now concentrated in Clyburn’s district — and that throwing out ballots already cast by South Carolinians serving overseas in the armed forces was fundamentally unfair.
“Every day you get closer to in-person early voting starting [on May 26], you’re going to get more absentee ballots in,” Massey reiterated to reporters late last week. “And the more ballots you have in, the bigger the problem is.”
Charleston Democratic Sen. Ed Sutton, who voted absentee in S.C. elections as a combat pilot in Afghanistan, hammered the ballot issue in a May 21 press conference, noting that the Senate debate will be playing out over Memorial Day weekend as the nation honors its war dead.
“How are we going to honor [their service] this Memorial Day weekend in South Carolina?” Sutton said. “We’re going to honor it by throwing out military ballots.”
How we got here
The S.C. House vote came on the sixth day of a bitterly contested special legislative session called by Gov. Henry McMaster, whose office said only two weeks ago that he did not plan to summon legislators back after the regular session ended on May 14.
But after an S.C. House measure to create a special redistricting session failed in the S.C. Senate on May 12, McMaster heeded public demands from President Donald Trump and called the session himself.
Trump has said that he believes Republicans can pick up as many as 20 U.S. House seats in this year’s midterms through last-minute redistricting efforts.
S.C. House Democrats denounced the “rigged” process that led to Wednesday morning’s vote, particularly after Republicans voted Tuesday to limit amendments and debate on the new maps. Prior to the rules change, Democrats had filed more than 600 amendments in an effort to slow the bill’s momentum.
“Never before in my 28 years up here have I seen us cheat and rig the game in the middle of the game,” House Democratic Leader Todd Rutherford said of the rules change in a Tuesday press conference. “What they’re doing is stealing an election.”
But concerns over the rules change didn’t stop with Democrats in the S.C. House.
Late May 18, the S.C. League of Women Voters and the ACLU of S.C. filed suit in Richland County Circuit Court, arguing that the House Rules Committee violated the state Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) when it met late Monday after giving public notice of just eight minutes. The groups also said the meeting agenda referred only to a discussion of redistricting — not action on a rules change.
Under FOIA, public bodies are required to give 24 hours’ notice of all meetings, except during emergencies.
Nevertheless, despite that statutory language, Judge Daniel Coble dismissed the suit late Wednesday, finding that the House has unreviewable authority to write its own rules under the state constitution.
Opponents of the legislation told Statehouse Report to expect more lawsuits in the days ahead.
“We as a party will absolutely be fighting this in court,” South Carolina Democratic Party Chair Christale Spain said in a May 14 interview. “Absolutely.”
Senate rules a challenge for supporters
Looking ahead, supporters and opponents agree that the greatest threat now facing the bill is a Senate rulebook that’s designed to slow down legislation and give members a meaningful chance to debate and deliberate.
That slower Senate pace has been on display since the bill arrived in the upper chamber Wednesday, when it spent a full day in committee rather than coming to the floor immediately, as it had in the House.
At the hearing, senators heard from state elections director Conway Belangia, who testified that a special congressional primary election in August would cost taxpayers between $5 million and $6 million, while creating a chaotic process for voters and election officials.
Also slowing the process are the 100 amendments Democratic senators have said they plan to file — a delaying tactic that Republicans can only cut short with a three-fifths vote after two full days of debate.
In fact, Democrats say that the only way Republicans can be certain of passing the bill before the start of in-person early voting next Tuesday is with a two-thirds supermajority vote to change the rules, as GOP members did in the House.
But with five Republican senators on record opposing the process, supporters would appear to be two votes shy of the required 31 votes.
“We think we can kill this in the Senate,” one opponent told Statehouse Report. “But definitely get your popcorn.”
- Jack O’Toole is Statehouse bureau chief for Statehouse Report and the Charleston City Paper.
- Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com
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