SC won’t accept absentee ballots that lack witness signature. What you need to know
Absentee ballots that lack witness signatures will not be counted if they are received by county voter offices after Wednesday, Oct. 7, regardless of when they were mailed.
The State Election Commission on Wednesday voted unanimously to instruct executive director Marci Andino to inform county election officials that they do not have the authority to “cure” absentee ballots that are received after Wednesday without witness signatures.
That means voters who may have been confused by the on-again, off-again court battle over whether the signatures were required and returned their ballots without a signature will have their votes rejected if their ballot did not arrive at county elections offices by Wednesday.
Election officials record whose ballots were returned without a witness signature, place those ballots in a special envelope and drop them in the ballot box, State Elections Commission spokesman Chris Whitmire said.
“Those ballots are never opened and never counted,” and there is no way for a voter to correct or “cure” the issue, meaning voters have no way to request another absentee ballot or vote in person, he said.
The Election Commission’s decision came two days after the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling that reinstated South Carolina’s requirement that absentee voters obtain a witness signature on the back of their mail-in ballot envelopes.
The high court on Monday overturned a decision by U.S. District Judge Michelle Childs, who in September had prohibited the Election Commission from enforcing the state’s witness signature requirement, arguing that it posed a danger to voters who would risk potential COVID-19 infection by seeking out a witness.
In an explanation of the reversal, Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that the Constitution entrusted citizens’ health and safety to their elected officials and that Childs, an unelected judge, should not have second guessed those officials. Additionally, he wrote, federal courts should not ordinarily alter state election rules so close to an election.
“By enjoining South Carolina’s witness requirement shortly before the election, the District Court defied that principle and this Court’s precedents,” Kavanaugh wrote.
The Supreme Court’s order carved out an exception for any absentee ballots lacking witness signatures that were cast before the justices’ Monday night decision and received within two days of it.
The Election Commission voted unanimously and without public discussion Wednesday to adopt the high court’s order as expressly written following a roughly hour-long executive session during which its members received legal guidance on the ruling.
In adopting the ruling, the Election Commission’s director will instruct county officials not to count any ballots without witness signatures not received by close of business Wednesday. Ballots that arrive without witness signatures after Wednesday, even if they were mailed before the Supreme Court’s ruling, will not be counted, Whitmire said.
The witness signature requirement, which was not in effect for the June primaries, stipulates that anyone, including a spouse, friend or a child, may serve as a witness and sign the mail-in envelope along with their address. The signature does not need to be notarized.
While all absentee ballots must contain a witness signature, there are no restrictions on who may vote absentee-by-mail or in-person in the November general election due to an absentee voting expansion lawmakers passed in September in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
As a result, state election officials are anticipating as many as 1 million absentee ballots to be cast statewide.
This story was originally published October 8, 2020 at 10:19 AM with the headline "SC won’t accept absentee ballots that lack witness signature. What you need to know."