THIS PETITION IS FOR South Carolina RESIDENTS ONLY!

Recently it came to the attention of Laurie Zapp, the President of Engage The Right that local progressive groups (Indivisible Beaufort, Lowcountry Indivisible, Sun City Indivisible, and Sheldon Township Community Support Partnership) have started a petition to allow absentee mail-in ballots and waive the required signature for our November 3, 2020. According to their latest email, they have over 1,500 signatures on their petition. On May 13, 2020 Governor Henry McMaster signed into law no-excuse voting which applied to the June 9, 2020 Primary. This law allowed for any registered voter in the state of South Carolina to request an absentee ballot by mail and waived the normal signature requirement and also allowed voters to vote in person absentee prior to the election. Normally, to be eligible to vote in person absentee, an individual must meet one of the listed 18 criteria. This law allowed any voter to essentially vote early and use COVID as their reason. This law then expired on July 1, 2020. 

Due to the fact that this law expired on July 1, 2020, Indivisible, Democrat state Representatives, and other progressive organizations are now working to have this law reinstituted.
 

By signing this petition, you agree that EVERY South Carolina citizen who is registered to vote, is over the age of 18 years, is a United States citizen, is mentally competent, and has never been convicted of a felony has the right to vote. We are opposing their petition for a multitude of reasons. First, the June 9, 2020 primary was to be a Republican primary. The Democrats had their South Carolina primary on February 29, 2020. Therefore, why were there multiple progressive organizations and Democratic Representatives pushing for changes to the June 9, 2020 primary. According to this article, Democrat South Carolina Representatives had been pushing for a mail-in only November election and changes to the elections in April of 2020. Second, by waving the required signature to prove that a ballot is valid, we are opening ourselves up to many instances where voter fraud can occur.

Engage The Right has identified 150 deceased individuals who are still listed as active registered voters in Beaufort, Charleston, and Jasper Counties. Although this information has been provided to the appropriate people, not all of the individuals have been removed from the active registered voter status. There are 46 counties in the state of South Carolina. Volunteers have only looked into 3 counties looking for deceased individuals still listed as active registered voters going back to 2018. We found one individual who passed away in 2014 who is still listed as an active registered voter. This was only found due to the family putting a memorial ad in the local paper.
 
By removing the required witness signature, there is no way to validate the ballots, and this presents an opportunity for individuals to commit voter fraud. We have numerous ways one could request mail-in ballots for others, but by removing the required signature, fraudulent votes may be cast.

We would like to keep in place our current laws pertaining to signatures on mail-in absentee ballots.