The new election legislation passed by the SC Legislature includes stipulations for the State Election Commission to set its own policy for hand count audits to be performed prior to the certification of elections(19.
Sounds a bit like a case of the fox guarding the hen house if you ask me, but SC election laws don't necessarily provide reassurance that elections will be handled with accuracy and transparency.
Back in August, I submitted a FOIA request to our Aiken County Elections Director Cynthia Holland inquiring about her method of selecting the precincts and offices for the local election audits, to which I just received a copy and pasted response from the SEC website above, reinforcing that the audits are open to the public, but no written procedure of how the office selects precincts for local elections.
Apparently not only does the Aiken office not HAVE a written procedure on file, they simply didn't even perform a hand count audit of any local races, at least not for the 2022 General Election.
During the August Aiken County Delegation meeting when the SEC presented the results of their audit of the Aiken County Elections Office, I utilized the public comment time to inquire of SEC Director Howard Knapp about the protocol when the hand count audits don't reconcile, as not all had reconciled during the 2022 Primaries as per the SEC website.
After the public testing, I reached out to one of our Aiken County Elections Commissioners and asked when the hand count audit would be as it is supposed to be completed prior to certification of the election, which was on Friday, Nov. 11.
The Monday before Election Day an acquaintance was at the County Registration & Election Office and I asked if they could find out - to which the Director, Cynthia Holland, replied that she didn't know yet but would let us know.
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