SCOTUS rules South Carolina absentee ballots must have a witness

Absentee ballots in South Carolina will have to have somebody witness their signature for the ballot to count. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court. While requiring a witness has long been the standard there, some were pushing to get rid of the requirement due to COVID-19.

“Since 1953, it’s been a requirement for anyone voting absentee, and absentee voting has been much less common in South Carolina because they’ve made it fairly hard to obtain an absentee ballot,” said Rob McKenna, former Washington state attorney general, on Seattle’s Morning News. “The Republicans are arguing that requiring a witness to your signature on the absentee ballot deters fraud. It’s not something we’re familiar with here in Washington state, since we don’t have to have a witness when we sign our mail-in ballots. But it’s been a requirement in South Carolina since the fifties.”

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“They’ve also had other requirements. For example, you have to provide a legitimate excuse to vote absentee. In other words, you have to provide a valid reason to vote absentee,” he explained. “The excuse requirement was waived by the Legislature earlier this year, so it was not in effect in 2020 … The District Court’s order (removing the requirement) was in turn overturned by the state Supreme Court because, according to Justice Kavanaugh, this is really a decision  — the requirement to have a witness — that should be made by the Legislature, and they’ve made the decision.”

Some people had already sent in their ballots without the witness signature. What happens to them?

“The Supreme Court’s order says that if a ballot was cast and received by the local election authorities within two days of the Supreme Court’s order, those absentee votes may not be rejected for failing to comply with the witness requirement. But all the others will have to comply with the witness requirement, to be returned with a witness signature,” McKenna said.

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“You have around 18,000 voters who had already returned their absentee ballots when the Supreme Court ruled, and probably a few more will come in within that two-day window,” he added. “Everybody else will have to comply with the witness requirement, which was not in effect for the primary but was in effect for mail-in voting back to 1953. The difference, of course, is that there are a lot more people voting absentee this time than in prior elections.”

Granted, finding a witness isn’t that difficult. It can even be your spouse.

“It could be anyone … This is an example of why we very well may not know the outcome of the presidential election for sometime after Election Day. It’ll be like Gore v. Bush, or Bush v. Gore, in 2000, but multiple cases, not just one case.”

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