S.C. House Panel Oks Delaying State Primaries to Redraw Voting Lines

COLUMBIA — A House panel advanced legislation Friday to push back South Carolina’s congressional primaries as GOP leadership attempts to redraw the voting lines.

Holding a second set of primaries in August could cost taxpayers at least $2.2 million, according to the state’s election chief. That does not include spending by county elections offices. It also doesn’t include the redistricting process itself.

In a 3-2 vote along party lines Friday, the House panel advanced a proposal to delay party primaries for the state’s seven congressional districts until Aug. 11. The full House Judiciary Committee will take the matter up Tuesday.

“Of course, it’s never good in the middle of an election cycle, but it is possible to accomplish the goals of the Legislature in conducting a special election in August,” state Election Commission Director Conway Belangia told members. “It will be difficult, but it is possible.”

Belangia outlined some of the difficulties:

• Elections staff have already printed the June ballots and cannot remove names.

• Staff mailed absentee ballots for military service members and other voters overseas weeks ago.

• Other non-overseas absentee ballots continue to go out daily. Those voters will likely have to request a second, separate ballot if congressional primaries are held in August.

As of Friday, nearly 6,830 total absentee ballots have been mailed and 260 of those have already been turned in, according to the commission.

By comparison, more than 19,700 absentee ballots — 528 overseas and 19,191 stateside — were issued for the 2022 statewide primaries.

“We can start sending out a notice, but at this point, a large number of people will have voted in good faith on the congressional ballot,” Belangia said. “Just the fact that we’re here today will cause voter confusion.”

There are also questions over whether, under federal law, candidates drawn out of the district they filed for could transfer fundraising dollars to a new campaign, not to mention the money spent to pitch themselves to a voter block they would no longer represent.

Mallory Dittmer of Fort Mill, a Democrat seeking election to the state’s 5th District, said her frustration is about more than money. The proposed, White House-endorsed map would split the Fort Mill School District, with Interstate 77 as the dividing line. While she would still live in the 5th District, many of her friends and colleagues would newly reside in the 6th District.

“It feels like they are punishing Fort Mill” and intentionally diluting the influence of the state’s highest-performing school district, said Dittmer, who founded a group that advocates for the local public schools.

“People are angry and are already looking for lawyers to fight for what they’ve put into this race,” she said. “Volunteers, donors and supporters — Democrats, Republicans and Independents — would now be shifted outside my district, and they are furious.”

Plus, county officials have already programmed and tested electronic voting machines.

“Trying to retool those machines now in any fashion would be very costly and very problematic, prone to mistakes,” Belangia said. “It would definitely set us up for potential failure in June.”

Asked whether an Aug. 11 primary date left enough time, Belangia said it would be “a squeeze” for the commission to complete all the necessary tasks and mail out overseas ballots the required 45 days in advance.

“It’s not going to be an easy process either way,” he said.

Rep. Spencer Wetmore, D-Folly Beach, said that did not “inspire a lot of confidence.”

The effort follows the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling last week that threw out Louisiana’s congressional map as unconstitutional gerrymandering based on race.

After the ruling came down, the White House asked Republican leaders in both Statehouse chambers to take a look at South Carolina’s district lines ahead of the November midterm elections.

On Thursday, a day after the House voted along party lines to allow a special session on redistricting, the chamber’s GOP leaders circulated the White House-backed map

Rep. Luke Rankin, lead sponsor of the two bills that could delay the primaries and drastically alter the state’s districts, wrote on social media he wants to redraw “the heavily gerrymandered 6th Congressional District,” in an effort to flip the state’s single U.S. House seat held by a Democrat.

“For years, conservatives have been shut out and silenced. Enough is enough. It’s time to fight back and make every voice count,” wrote the Laurens County Republican.

After the 1990 census, federal courts prompted the Legislature to create a seat to give Black voters a voice. The result was a majority-Black 6th District, which U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn has represented ever since. Because of the court intervention, the 1992 congressional contests were also postponed. His first primary win occurred Aug. 25, 1992.

Clyburn is seeking an 18th term in November. But the proposed overhaul would draw the 85-year-old out of the district he’s represented for 34 years.

The House panel did not take a vote Friday on the bill that would draw the lines. The subcommittee chairman, Rep. Jay Jordan, told reporters he wanted to let “the map sink in a little more,” before any further action.

Meanwhile, the Florence Republican said analysis continues of whether the map, as drawn, will indeed give the GOP the full house it desires.

House Judiciary Chairman Weston Newton chimed in that it gives the party the option of opening up the process.

“It’s a fast-moving train but it had to start somewhere if it was going to start,” the Bluffton Republican said.

Despite the moves made by House Republicans, the matter really hinges on whether the state Senate passes the resolution allowing redistricting to be taken up after the regular session ends May 14.

Senators on Thursday postponed debate to look at the map before deciding whether to upend primaries that are less than five weeks away. A vote on the Senate floor is now expected Tuesday.

The measure will take two-thirds approval. While the GOP has supermajority control in both chambers, some Republican senators, including the majority leader, oppose the idea.

Republican U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham added his own concerns Thursday about potentially tighter margins. Speaking with reporters in Bluffton, Graham said he’d had conversations with White House staff, telling them to “make sure the map accomplishes the goal.”

“If, at the end of the day, we create a map that gives Democrats more competitive opportunity, what have you gained?” said Graham, who’s on the primary ballot in his own re-election bid. “You may pick up one seat. You may risk two or three others.”

Opponents to the effort testifying Friday included representatives of voter’s rights groups, other congressional candidates, a poll worker and Democratic party leadership.

No one spoke in favor of the bills.

“Changing our maps undermines trust in our elections,” said Jace Woodrum, who heads the South Carolina chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. “A lawmaker in favor of election integrity cannot be in favor of this bill.”

Woodrum went on to say the proposed map would dilute the influence of racial and political minorities.

Rep. Cody Mitchell, R-Bethune, asked whether moving the 6th District deeper into the rural Pee Dee, as the proposed map suggests, and stacking the 2nd District with all of Orangeburg, Calhoun, Allendale, Hampton and Bamberg counties might give a stronger voice to more rural South Carolinians.

Woodrum responded that he grew up near Piedmont in ruby red Anderson County.

“My parents still live there. They are tried and true Republicans. And now Richland County, where I live, is in their same district,” he said. “I live two hours from them. We are just about as different as you could imagine.”

“Richland County now looks like a political jigsaw puzzle, split into three distinct districts,” added Jaime Harrison of Columbia, former chair of the Democratic National Committee. “More communities that share common, schools, economies, transportation systems, churches and histories are being carved apart, all for political purposes.”

The existing map splits Richland County between two districts: the 6th and 2nd. While the 6th District is no longer majority-minority due to population changes in the state, it still has by far the largest percentage of Black residents, at 48%, as of the 2020 census. That compares to 26% in the 2nd District. The 1st District had the smallest percentage, at 18%.

Harrison, along with current state Democratic Party Chairwoman Christale Spain, spoke about their parents and grandparents’ experiences growing up in Jim Crow South Carolina. Spain said one of her uncles was killed by the Ku Klux Klan in Georgetown County. Both said the proposed map is regressive for Black South Carolinians.

So did a Lexington Republican who’s challenging incumbent U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson for the 2nd Congressional District. Sam Gibbons is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and former social studies teacher at Dreher High School, where he taught for eight years.

“Most of my students were Black and had feelings of apathy and or distrust towards our political system,” he said. “I worked hard to give them the hope and instill a sense of political efficacy that their input mattered.”

Now, nine days after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision on Louisiana’s districts, Gibbons said South Carolina is ready to eliminate the one Black voice in its delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives.

U.S. Sen. Tim Scott countered that’s a bad argument. The lone Black Republican in the U.S. Senate was first elected to Congress in 2010. Then a state House member, he defeated Paul Thurmond in a runoff to represent the coastal 1st District after leading a nine-way GOP primary, which also included the oldest son of the late Gov. Carroll Campbell.

“I beat Strom Thurmond’s son in a majority-white district for a seat in Congress. Then won statewide in South Carolina, a majority white state. South Carolina elects leaders based on ideas, not identity,” he wrote Thursday on X.

As for Wilson, he told the SC Daily Gazette in a statement: “I support President Trump’s quest for fairness in redistricting and I have faith in the Republican majorities in the House and in the Senate.”