WASHINGTON – Today, Heritage Action, a conservative grassroots organization with two million grassroots activists, including thousands of South Carolinians, released a statement from Executive Director Jessica Anderson thanking the South Carolina General Assembly for passing S.108 to protect the state’s elections.
Our voting processes must be protected at all costs. Thanks to the work of the General Assembly and grassroots activists across the state, South Carolina’s new election integrity measures will ensure that it is easier to vote and harder to cheat.
These protections will guarantee that only eligible voters are able to cast ballots, increase the security of the absentee voting process, and ensure South Carolina’s elections are free from undue influence by prohibiting the private funding of election operations. We look forward to Governor McMaster formally enacting the legislation and working with lawmakers alongside our grassroots activists to further increase the security and integrity of elections.
Background:
Specifically, this legislation would:
Prohibit private funding of elections.
Ensure accurate and updated voter rolls,
Create procedures to investigate the validity of registrations,
Curb absentee ballot harvesting,
Strengthen voter ID requirements for absentee ballots,
Provide legal standing for the legislature in matters dealing with elections,
Establish methods of auditing election results after every statewide election, and
Make violations of election laws felonies and increase penalties.
Last year, Heritage Action invested an initial $10 million into a first-ever state advocacy campaign to secure and strengthen state election systems. This year, Heritage Action is continuing to work with state governments and grassroots leaders to advance conservative priorities in the states.
The Heritage Foundation has also documented over one thousand incidents of criminal convictions and voter fraud at the Election Fraud Database, showing that some criminals have been able to exploit longstanding vulnerabilities in election systems to commit voter fraud.