SC’s state elections director Marci Andino to resign as lawmakers look at voting changes
South Carolina’s state elections director Marci Andino will resign her post at the end of the year, Andino wrote in a two-page letter to the State Election Commission board Wednesday.
Andino will resign effective Dec. 31, according to the letter provided to The State.
Chris Whitmire, spokesman for the state agency, confirmed the resignation letter, adding it speaks for itself.
“I have dedicated most of my life’s work to ensuring my fellow South Carolinians had the opportunity to vote in fair and impartial elections,” Andino wrote to board Chairman John Wells. “As I near the fulfillment of the duties of my current post, I stand proud of our accomplishments. And as I plan for future opportunities, I will always remain steadfast in my dedication to the preservation of our democracy.”
The news comes months after Andino knocked heads with Republican leaders, frustrated over her role in encouraging them to adopt COVID-19 voter safety measures ahead of the November 2020 election. And it comes at a time when the Republican-controlled Legislature is weighing changes to how voters cast ballots and while senators are holding hearings reviewing the State Election Commission’s charge overseeing state and local elections.
Andino was the agency’s fourth executive director, running the elections agency since 2003. She earned $114,933 a year and was one of 26 agency heads to get a pay raise in the past year.
Andino is not a Cabinet official under Gov. Henry McMaster’s administration. However, the governor appoints the five-member State Elections Commission board to four-year terms, and the board oversees the director.
“Gov. McMaster appreciates Ms. Andino’s many years of service to our state and wishes her the best,” said Brian Symmes, spokesman for the Governor’s Office.
State lawmakers have lauded Andino for her nearly two decades of work over the State Elections Commission, a position responsible for overseeing elections for federal, state and local races that often put her at odds with county offices.
Under her leadership, the State Election Commission made significant advancements that included, in 2011, implementing a new statewide voter registration system. In 2012, Andino wrote she oversaw the state’s photo ID laws, and, a year later, oversaw a new candidate filing process.
She also stood at the helm of the agency as it switched to a paper-based voting system providing voters and election officials with a paper audit.
Andino came under fire in 2018, after McClatchy and The State reported that she was among a group of election officials who received expenses-paid trips to attend meetings as part of Election Systems & Software’s national advisory board. Andino reported on her state financial disclosures expenses paid by ES&S, which is the state’s vendor for voting machines and software, since 2009, but said she was not involved in the agency’s decision to pick ES&S as a vendor.
But the COVID-19 pandemic, and a letter Andino sent to lawmakers last year requesting stricter health measures, frustrated Republican leaders after the Legislature went to court to defend a voting measure that she asked to be removed.
In that July 2020 letter, Andino asked Senate President Harvey Peeler, R-Cherokee, and House Speaker Jay Lucas, R-Darlington, to consider again expanding absentee, early voting to all South Carolinians and, in particular, remove the witness signature requirement on absentee ballots.
That latter request was challenged in court, and eventually the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the witness signature requirement in October.
The high court’s unanimous decision overruled an order a month earlier, when U.S. District Judge Michelle Childs, persuaded by the pandemic, ruled the State Election Commission was prohibited from enforcing the state law requiring a witness signature.
“Our team again answered the call in 2020. I am proud to say, thanks to hundreds of steadfast state and county election professionals and thousands of poll managers who stepped up to serve, we conducted the best general election in history under the worst circumstances,” Andino wrote.
She wrote that legislation and the court decisions “changed the rules frequently, but we adapted and stayed focused on making sure reasonable precautions were taken and every voter had the information they needed to cast their ballot.”
But in the months since that letter and the November 2020 elections, Republican leaders have made it clear through legislation, and some have said repeatedly, they want change at the State Election Commission.
House and Senate lawmakers have filed and passed legislation to give the Legislature more power over the State Election Commission board and give the agency more oversight over county election offices. Late Wednesday, the Senate amended and passed the House version empowering the state agency.
Andino’s resignation letter comes during Senate oversight panel hearings into the State Elections Commission.
Senators and other leaders have praised Andino for leading the agency through a pandemic when it dealt with a shortage of poll workers, precinct consolidations and a virus outbreak in the middle of an unprecedented presidential election year.
“I think they did an incredible job under the most difficult circumstances probably any of us could have ever imagined,” Sen. Nikki Setzler, D-Lexington, told Andino at a March hearing, the Associated Press reported.
But other political leaders told The State it is time for a leadership change.
“We think it’s probably for the best,” said Drew McKissick, chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party. “We’ve seen over the course of the events of last year, particularly with the federal lawsuits brought by Democrats, where she tended to, I think, get in the way of her own election commission members ... (and) tended to go rouge a little bit.”
McKissick told The State Friday he was not worried about Andino’s leave right as the Legislature heads into 2022, an election year and the final year of its two-year General Assembly, during which lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are looking to make major changes to voting rules.
He said the agency will have plenty of time to make adjustments ahead of the Legislature’s January return.
Trav Robertson, chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, does not like the timing.
“It’s a sad day when an individual performs their job above and beyond reproach and doesn’t have the support of the elected officials because the civil serve won’t do their political pandering,” Robertson told The State. “I think the Republicans who claim to love freedom and democracy are proving they only love it for them.”
This story was originally published May 12, 2021 at 2:42 PM with the headline "SC’s state elections director Marci Andino to resign as lawmakers look at voting changes."
