- BIG STORY: S.C. dodged bullet for midterm elections, officials say
- ROUNDUP: S.C. pols debate suspending gas tax as prices soar
- LOWCOUNTRY, Ariail: Spineless, brainless, directionless
- BRACK: On hurricanes, Senate race, debates, AI
- MY TURN, Knapp: S.C.’s elected leaders fail on utility merger
- MYSTERY PHOTO: Lots of wood
- FEEDBACK: Send us your thoughts
S.C. dodged bullet for midterm elections, officials say
By Jack O’Toole, Statehouse bureau | The long-simmering fight over voting in this fall’s midterm elections came to a rolling boil this week when the U.S. Supreme Court effectively killed President Trump’s plan to give the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) unprecedented control over mail-in ballots in all 50 states.
Trump condemned the decision in a Tuesday social media post, saying “the Supreme Court has really let our country down.”
“It is a big loss for Republicans, and America itself, and makes cheating by the radical left ‘Dumocrats’ on mail-in ballots a much easier thing to do,” Trump wrote. “And now they have an open field to do so!”
But according to voting advocates, the ruling prevented a last-minute breakdown in the absentee voting process here in the Palmetto State and around the country.
“We dodged a huge bullet,” said S.C. League of Women Voters Vice President Lynn Teague, whose national organization was one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. “It was mechanically impossible to put in place reliably. All it would have done is create chaos.”
Among the concerns about Trump’s plan: the short window of time that states had to get vote-by-mail envelopes approved by the USPS, and the requirement that election officials upload information about all voters receiving absentee ballots to a federal website that’s still under construction.
“All the evidence, including from a Postal Service whistleblower, is that it would have been a catastrophe,” Teague said.
Wide-scale cheating claims ‘unfounded’ in S.C.
Despite Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of widespread “cheating,” there’s significant evidence that South Carolina elections are clean and well run, starting with a top-to-bottom 2024 review by the state Legislative Audit Council.
The bottom line?
“We did not find a material problem with ineligible individuals voting,” the report stated, while noting that a handful of individual cases existed. “We also found no incidences where non-U.S. citizens with state IDs or driver’s licenses had voted.”
Nevertheless, when former Rep. Adam Morgan, R-Greenville, then chairman of the S.C. Freedom Caucus, suggested that state election officials were registering illegal voters, Gov. Henry McMaster directed the State Law Enforcement Division to investigate.
And once again, the review produced a clean bill of health for the state’s election system.
“The report confirms the integrity of South Carolina’s voter registration system,” McMaster said of the report, which found the allegation to be unfounded. “Agencies are properly complying with state and federal voter registration laws, and no evidence of unlawful activity was found.”
‘Safe and secure’
Charleston Democratic Sen. Ed Sutton told the Charleston City Paper he has “confidence” in S.C. elections, despite the normal errors that would be expected of any system with millions of interactions.
“I feel from all the conversations I’ve had that the professionals are still in charge, both here in Charleston and at the state level,” Sutton said.
Still, Sutton said, he’s concerned that further Trump administration actions, such as demands for state-level voter data and the use of federal “monitors” in some areas, could suppress turnout this fall by intimidating, or just plain confusing, many voters.
“There are people at the federal level who’ve made the calculation that the less people who vote in this election, the better it is for Donald Trump,” Sutton said. “So you’ve got to show up, vote, and make your voice heard.”
ACLU of S.C. spokesman Paul Bowers described similar concerns, but also seemed to share Sutton’s larger view of the state’s election process.
“We can’t predict the future, but we can say that by and large, our elections here have been safe and secure,” Bowers said. “For all our problems, our elections are well run.”
But, he said, if voters do have problems on election day, they should call the election protection hotline at 866-OUR-VOTE (866-687-8683).
“The problems we hear about most often are not at the level of national conspiracies,” he said. “They’re local issues and they can be serious, but they can usually be resolved.”
‘Multiple levels of security in place’
With the vote-by-mail question now settled, election officials stressed the security of S.C.’s existing absentee voting system.
“I want to make sure voters know they can trust the election process here in South Carolina and in Charleston,” said Isaac Cramer, executive director of the Charleston County Board of Elections. “There are multiple levels of security in place. And we have a great relationship with USPS locally to help troubleshoot any issues we ever encounter.”
In addition, he noted, voters can track their absentee ballot requests throughout the process on the commission’s website.
Asked what voters need to know heading into election season, Cramer offered three items.
First, he said, if you’re not signed up to vote, the deadline to register in this November’s election is Oct. 2 in person and Oct. 4 online. And if you’re already registered, it’s always a good idea to check your information at SCVotes.com to make sure it’s accurate and up-to-date.
Second, if you have any questions about the process, contact the commission directly or visit the commission website. “Don’t go to Facebook,” Cramer said.
And finally, if you still have concerns about the process, he offered a simple suggestion.
“Elections are at a point now where people have questions, and I really would ask that people consider being a poll worker,” Cramer said. “That’s the best way to see the safeguards that are in place.”
He added, “We’re always recruiting poll workers for our elections, and we’d love for people to be a part of that process.”
Jack O’Toole is Statehouse bureau chief for Statehouse Report and the Charleston City Paper. Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com
S.C. pols debate suspending gas tax as prices soar
By Jack O’Toole, Statehouse bureau | With South Carolina gas prices exploding past $4 a gallon this week, Palmetto State political leaders are reaching for the nearest lever to try to give angry consumers a break — a temporary suspension of the state’s 28-cents-per-gallon gas tax.
GOP candidate for governor Alan Wilson opened the bidding on Monday, calling on state lawmakers to give Gov. Henry McMaster the authority to lift the tax for up to 120 days, using money from state reserves to offset losses to the highway fund.
“South Carolina families don’t have the luxury of waiting on Columbia to go through a lengthy legislative process when they’re getting crushed at the pump,” said Claire Brady, Wilson’s deputy campaign manager. “Alan Wilson believes the governor should have the ability to respond quickly and temporarily suspend the gas tax when extraordinary circumstances are driving fuel prices to unsustainable levels.”
In a separate proposal, S.C. Rep. Jordan Pace, R-Berkeley, chair of the uber-conservative House Freedom Caucus, floated a plan to rebate the gas tax by refunding up to $300 on state income tax returns. Pace said the $500 million plan could be paid for by eliminating earmarks and reclaiming leftover funds in agency budgets.
Meanwhile, at the national level, 7th District U.S. Rep. Russell Fry called on Congress to suspend the 18-cents-per-gallon federal gas tax — an idea that also has the support of Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Annie Andrews.
“This moment demands an all-of-the-above approach and all hands on deck to bring down costs for South Carolinians,” Andrews said in a release.
Nevertheless, significant concerns about the proposals remain — particularly regarding any plan that could impact S.C.’s highway fund.
“That’s where most of the state money comes from to build roads,” McMaster told reporters this week. “So, if we reduce that tax, we’ll be cutting into that money. I don’t think that’s a good idea, because roads are long-term (and) this shortage, I hope, is short-term. I hope it’ll be over soon.”
According to Brown University, regular gas prices are up about 50% since the start of the Iran War in February.
In other recent news
2026: Graham, Andrews agree to U.S. Senate debate. GOP U.S. Sen. Darline Graham accepted Democratic candidate Annie Andrews request for a debate. They will face off Oct. 11 at SCETV in Columbia.
STATEHOUSE: S.C. lawmakers struggling to regulate A.I. as its use, growth is expanding daily. Little artificial intelligence legislation has moved in the Statehouse, even as public concerns around the technology mount with residents.
- $610,000 earmark to cover some spay, neuter surgeries
- S.C.’s road buyback program aims to shift some state roads back to local control
- S.C. senators continue to push for changes to income, property taxes
- S.C. sets aside $75M for rural, charter school capital projects
- S.C. senator talks about his return to Afghanistan
S.C. rural health gets $200 million in federal health funding. Despite cuts to Medicaid, S.C. rural hospitals and doctors are getting a share of new federal rural health funding.
S.C. Supreme Court to decide if McMaster overstepped with Guard’s D.C. deployment. A legal challenge over Gov. Henry McMaster’s decision to send National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., could test the bounds of the governor’s power as the state’s commander in chief, attorneys argued to the state Supreme Court on Tuesday.
New ACLU report is critical of S.C. juvenile justice system. Child advocates say the South Carolina juvenile justice system is failing the children who it is supposed to rehabilitate.
S.C. population is booming, but not its voter rolls. About 3.4 million people were registered here in 2022, according to the S.C Election Commission’s year-end report, roughly the same as the most recent registration total listed Sept. 15.
McMaster recognized for conservation efforts. This story outlines recognition by the Conservation Voters of South Carolina for Gov. Henry McMaster’s efforts to protect the environment through the years.
Spineless, brainless, directionless
Award-winning cartoonist Robert Ariail has a special knack for shining a light on critical issues in just the right way. This week, he takes on Congress.
- Love this week’s cartoon or hate it? Did he go too far, or not far enough? Send your thoughts to feedback@statehousereport.com.
Brack: On hurricanes, Senate race, debates, AI
Commentary by Andy Brack, Statehouse Report | The news has been pretty dull of late. But if you’re thinking about hurricanes, that’s good news.
The Atlantic coast apparently has reached a new record: No hurricanes so far this season. That’s the longest time without a first big storm since the modern satellite era started in the mid-1960s. As of Sept. 18, the coast has gone 110 days without an active storm that became a hurricane. There have been five minor storms since the hurricane season started June 1, but there haven’t been any with winds of 74 mph or more.
According to a story on S.C. Public Radio, it’s tough to turn to history before satellites to confirm whether a storm became a hurricane because something might have formed at sea and remained there without anyone knowing. Nevertheless, pre-satellite records suggest the latest time that a season’s first Atlantic hurricane formed was Oct. 5, 1905. And there appear to be two years without hurricanes – 1907 and 1914. Let’s hope the El Nino wind patterns do whatever they do to make 2026 a year without hurricanes.
While this good news on storms might have caught your eye, other stories are worth nothing.
The Darline effect. You know that something might be going awry with a Republican candidate’s campaign when an old-school conservative like Washington Post columnist George Will throws a big bone to the Democratic nominee.
“This year, South Carolinians can demonstrate political independence by electing Democrat Annie Andrews,” wrote Will. “She is a 45-year-old mother of three and a pediatrician who likes children and wants to be in the U.S. Senate.”
It’s pretty clear in the commentary that he’s frustrated by the appointment of Darline Graham, sister of the late GOP U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham who died unexpectedly in July, to take her brother’s seat. She won a late, packed GOP primary, but it had to go to a runoff and was messy.
Will seems to be most irked that Graham seems to be nothing but an automatic yes vote for whatever President Donald Trump wants. He said the framers of the country wanted senators to be independent – “mature and insulated from transitory gusts of public opinion.”
Gray area. Looks like voters will see the stuff that Andrews and Graham are made of in an Oct. 11 debate to be broadcast statewide on SCETV. What’s not clear is whether they’ll debate on Gray media stations owned in the state. Why? Because Gray Media is doing something that sounds just plain weird – requiring candidates to sign exclusivity agreements to take part in debates they televise.
That is, quite frankly, anti-democratic – in the sense that one outlet wants to control the process for its financial benefit which would, in fact, chill political discussion in a socially irresponsible way. The framers wanted more debate, not less. Let’s hope all candidates refuse to accept Gray Media’s terms for debates as long as the company is motivated by something other than allowing voters to see candidates for what they are. (Shout out to SCETV: Thank goodness you’re there to fill the gap as you long have.)
It’s the people, stupid. A special state Senate committee is finally at work to try to figure out South Carolina’s part of what to do to keep artificial intelligence from taking over.
It’s about time, as highlighted in a new editorial in the Charleston City Paper that says state and federal lawmakers need to step in and regulate AI: “AI is moving at such a frightening pace that regular people are smart to be worried. It’s also time for people to insist that the government step away from its laissez-faire treatment of the industry.
“Federal and state lawmakers should regulate it, slow down its development and make sure applications are for the common good, not something that can metastasize into an untamed digital beast to make humans unnecessary.”
Andy Brack is editor and publisher of Statehouse Report and the Charleston City Paper. Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com.
Knapp: S.C.’s elected leaders fail on NextEra/Dominion merger
Commentary by Frank Knapp | NextEra and Dominion Energy felt it necessary to offer more benefits this week to Virginia ratepayers and the state’s economy to persuade its regulatory agency to approve the proposed merger of the two companies.
In South Carolina, the story couldn’t be more different.
In a Sept. 14 commentary in The Washington Post, the CEOs of the two utilities claimed its “stronger package of benefits” resulted from months of meetings with Dominion’s Virginia customers.
But the real reason for the new benefits offer was revealed in the utilities’ press release from the same day. The upgrade was a “direct response to feedback from policymakers and other stakeholders.”
In Virginia, there has been a growing bipartisan drumbeat among public officials against the merger, the turnaround speed of the regulatory process and the need for more concessions from NextEra. Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger has intervened in the merger process saying that she is “deeply skeptical about whether selling our primary state-regulated utility to an out-of-state company is good for the commonwealth.”
A bipartisan group of Virginia state lawmakers has called for a special legislative session to review the merger and extend the six-month timeline for the regulatory body to make a decision. Virginia’s Speaker of the House has given four merger demands to NextEra to benefit the state saying, “I don’t want their promises. I want their action. I’m watching.”
So, what are the enhanced benefits NextEra and Dominion are now offering Virginia?
- Extending the original $10 monthly bill credits from two years to four years by asking “data centers to transfer their share of bill credits to residential customers.”
- A 50% increase ($100 million) in the “Dominion Energy’s shareholder-funded low-income financial assistance program” through 2038.
- $100 million in workforce development.
- Up to $1 billion for a five-year “Virginia Supplier Program for contractors, suppliers and service providers doing business in Virginia.”
- Keeping Dominion employee numbers the same for at least five years.
- Adding “600 new NextEra Energy jobs in Virginia.”
But while this is good for Virginia, these promised, bigger benefits have not been publicly offered to South Carolina and our Dominion ratepayers?
Why not?
The answer is that while we have several organizations that publicly oppose the merger, are calling for more NextEra concessions or at least want a longer time for the process; we don’t have the strong, public voice from our elected officials that is circulating in Virginia.
While those Virginia public officials are roaring and demanding more from NextEra, only crickets are publicly heard in South Carolina.
The state’s two powerful legislators who have intervened in our regulatory merger process – the president of the Senate and speaker of the House – have not issued strong demands or concerns as done by Virginia’s governor and House speaker. Instead, they have officially sided with the NextEra/Dominion request for a six-month regulatory process, actions that have implicitly told our Public Service Commission of their support for the utilities.
In fact, our governor, Henry McMaster, has been silent on the merger as have our legislators.
While the old saying, “If you don’t ask, you don’t get” is good advice for our legislature, South Carolina might still benefit from all the heavy lifting going on in Virginia.
Should NextEra and Dominion offer the same new benefits to South Carolina, we should say thanks and then ask for more using those concessions as “starting points for getting more for our ratepayers” and state.
But if our Public Service Commission approves the NextEra/Dominion merger – and I am not suggesting that it should – here are some suggestions for going beyond the new benefits offered to Virginia:
- Establish much higher targets for customer energy savings from energy efficiency programs.
- Agree to a specific commitment from the utility to acquire much higher levels of S.C.-produced renewable energy combined with battery storage.
- Adopt a large load tariff to ensure that data centers pay for their own energy needs.
- Commit to holding the construction budget for the new Dominion/Santee Cooper gas plant at Canadys to the $5 billion as the application stated to protect ratepayers.
- Set firm and enforceable dates for closing coal plants.
- Agree to limit NextEra’s spending to influence elected officials.
- Require every existing and new data center to have a kill switch that is controlled at the local level by a community-based organization empowered to literally pull a data center offline and off the electricity grid if tech warnings of rogue AI agents independently taking actions to harm humans come true.
To our state’s elected officials: NextEra and Dominion desperately want the merger. Raise your voices to demand more benefits for South Carolina.
Frank Knapp is the president, CEO and co-founder of the South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce.
Lots of wood
Here’s an interesting image that shows a lot of wood. It’s somewhere in South Carolina, but where? Bonus: Tell us what it is. Please send in your best guess – and your name and hometown – to feedback@statehousereport.com. And if you have a mystery photo to share, send that along too (but tell us what it is because we’re horrible guessers.)
Last week’s mystery, “Smokestack,” is in Honea Path and shows part of Chiquola Mill, which operated as a textile mill for 100 years starting in 1903. It was the site of the Bloody Thursday uprising on Sept. 6, 1934, in which 300 union members gathered to protest low wages and poor working conditions. As highlighted in this post, seven people died violently.
Reader Rachel Cox, who sent in the photo, said she hoped “the site will record some of the history that happened there.”
Other readers who correctly identified the site were: Jay Altman of Columbia; Frank Bouknight of Summerville; Michael Webb of Hartsville; and George Graf of Palmyra, Va.
- SHARE: If you have a Mystery Photo to share, please send it to us – and make sure you tell us what it is!
Send us your thoughts
Please send us your thoughts about politics and policy in South Carolina, but make sure to leave phone numbers and hometowns to help us verify them for publication. We publish non-defamatory comments, but unless you provide your contact information – name and hometown, plus a phone number used only by us for verification – we can’t publish your views.
- Have a comment? Send your letters or comments to: feedback@statehousereport.com. Make sure to provide your contact details (name, hometown and phone number for verification. Letters are limited to 150 words.
Statehouse Report, founded in 2001 as a weekly legislative forecast that informs readers about what is going to happen in South Carolina politics and policy, is provided by email to you at no charge every Friday.
- Editor and publisher: Andy Brack, 843.670.3996
- Statehouse bureau chief: Jack O’Toole
We can use your help
We’re proud to offer Statehouse Report for free. For more than a dozen years, we’ve been the go-to place for insightful independent policy and political news and views in the Palmetto State. And we love it as much as you do.
But now, we can use your help. If you’ve been thinking of contributing to Statehouse Report over the years, now would be a great time to contribute as we deal with the crisis. In advance, thank you.
More
- Mailing address: Send inquiries by mail to: P.O. Box 21942, Charleston, SC 29413
- Subscriptions are free. If you want to subscribe, send us an email: feedback@statehousereport.com with the word “subscribe” in the subject. We hope you’ll keep receiving the great news and information from Statehouse Report, but if you need to unsubscribe, go to the bottom of the weekly email issue and follow the instructions.
- Read our sister publication: Charleston City Paper (every Friday in print; Every day online)
- © 2026, Statehouse Report, a publication of City Paper Publishing, LLC. All rights reserved.
Help keep the City Paper free.
No paywalls.
No subscription cost.
Free delivery at 800 locations.
Help support independent journalism by donating today.
