Howard Knapp, Executive Director of the SC Election Commission presented to the Legislative Delegation of Beaufort County the finding of the SEC review of redistricting and the issues associated with early voting for the June 14, 2022 primaries.

The full presentation can be watch at the following locations:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcafQuJudtA or
https://beaufortcountysc.new.swagit.com/videos/186538

Please note that Beaufort County in this summary refers to Beaufort County Board of Voter Registration & Elections. It is a separate organization from the County Council and County Administrator.

The Board of Voter Registration and Elections of Beaufort County was established in accordance with Section 7-5-10 of the South Carolina Code of Laws and is made up of nine members appointed by the Governor of the State of South Carolina upon recommendation of the Beaufort County Legislative Delegation. The Director Marie Smalls serves at pleasure of the Board.

Summary of Findings:

Redistricting is an in-frequent, complex, and time-sensitive process. However, as this report shows and the various appendixes illustrate, Beaufort County was not on a compressed timeline to complete the county council redistricting process, unlike many other counties. Also, unlike many other counties, Beaufort County (Board of Elections) has an experienced director and staff who have been involved in past redistricting cycles.

Beaufort County is also a large county with adequate local resources (i.e. adequate staffing in the voter registration and election office, seemingly sufficient funding to accomplish its mission, and a County GIS office (Beaufort County Government) that provided assistance); all of which many other counties do not possess.

In fact, in a March 9 email, the County (Board of Elections) Director stated the County GIS office had updated County Council files, indicating the GIS Department was providing assistance. The bottom line is other counties, with less resources and less experience, successfully redistricted their county council districts with no problems.

During the statewide redistricting process, the SEC attempted to provide as much information, assistance, and resources to counties as possible to complete the redistricting process. Director calls, ElectionNet posts, the SEC Redistricting Manual, and other resources, outlined the steps involved in the redistricting process (ie. decode changes, street data file updates, and moving of voters). Beaufort County (Board of Elections) demonstrated, by virtue of emails, they clearly understood the process.

In summation, the SEC reviewed the redistricting data from Beaufort County and found that Beaufort County (Board of Elections) understood voters needed to be redistricted at the county council level, but never redistricted them nor asked the SEC to manually redistrict any voters. As has been shown, Beaufort County (Board of Elections) received multiple error lists, but there is no record of Beaufort County requesting the SEC to move the voters.

After forensically analyzing Beaufort County redistricting data and its election databases, the SEC determined that:

1) Approximately 70 voters had been given a ballot with the wrong county council district across 15 precincts: Bluffton 1D, Bluffton 2B, Bluffton 4B, Bluffton 4C, Bluffton 4D, Bluffton 2A, Bluffton 2E, Hilton Head 1B, Hilton Head 4D, Hilton Head 4B, Hilton Head 2C, Hilton Head 4A, Hilton Head 4C, Hilton Head 5A, and Hilton Head 5B.

2) 2,038 voters in those 15 precincts were not redistricted by the Beaufort County office. However, the SEC found that 3,237 voters, in total, were not redistricted at the county council level throughout the entire County.

To address this issue, the SEC created a new election database for the impacted precincts, ensuring the voters in those precincts would get the correct ballot. While this ensured voters would get the correct ballot on election day, it created a dual-election database situation, which would cause complications with election night results reporting.

This meant that Beaufort County (Board of Elections) staff had to manually enter results from the old database into the new database. Because this was a manual process being executed by a human and was not the normal automated process, this caused a significant delay in election night reporting.

By the next morning (June 15), partial unofficial election results were posted on the SEC’s ENR site. In an effort to start auditing the election results, especially since nearly an entire databases’ results were manually entered, the SEC requested results from the two databases, which was provided by Beaufort County (Board of Elections). By the night of June 15, the total unofficial election results were posted on the SEC ENR page.

Due to the confusion surrounding all of the aforementioned issues, the fact that Beaufort County election officials offered no statement explaining the problems or resolutions, and out of an abundance of caution to ensure transparency of the process, on the morning of 6/16, the SEC Executive Director ordered a public retabulating of election results.

Following the retabulation, the SEC compared and audited the original results, retabulation results, results tapes (from the ballot scanners), and Beaufort County’s hand count audits. This audit was completed the morning of June 17, and the SEC communicated to Beaufort County (Board of Elections) the audit confirmed the results. The Beaufort County Board of Canvassers certified later that same day.

For further information or comments please contact:

Howard Knapp, Executive Director
SC Elections Commission
Office: (803) 734-9060
https://scvotes.gov/contact/