Is it really reducing the impact of absentee voting?
Bill 4919 has been lauded by the establishment as being a bill that puts more restrictions on absentee voting in SC, but my question is compared to what?
Prior to COVID, we didn’t have any in-person “absentee voting.” Due to COVID, the state allowed people to vote in person 40 days prior to the election as well as to mail in their ballots. Bill 4919 is now reducing the time period of in-person absentee balloting to 2 weeks which is 12 times the time period of in-person voting prior to COVID.
Further restrictions were put on who could request an absentee ballot to be mailed in.
Here are the people allowed to vote absentee by mail:
- Students and their spouses and dependents
- Anyone serving in the Armed Forces and their spouses and dependents
- Government employees and their spouses and dependents
- Anyone 65 and older
Does this seem restrictive to you?
The only people I see eliminated are people who need to be at work when the polls are open.
They even allow people to vote absentee mail-in if they will be out of the county during the 2-week period and election day but who will be checking that? I could just say I was going to be out of town and request an absentee ballot. I assume that the same people who are keeping our voter rolls clean will not do the best job of verifying the absentee status of the mail-in voters.
My personal view is that these bills are trojan horses for expanded absentee voting which promulgates FRAUD. This is where the majority of the issues occur and it is something even President Jimmy Carter warned about.
Furthermore, Bill 3444 gives more power to the SEC in a centralized fashion when they are the ones who have been negligent in cleaning the rolls. That is not a good thing. Some of the other provisions in the bill are ok but that is how trojan horses work. They seem great on the outside but beware of the details. Look forward to our blog on that.
These bills are going to require many amendments if we the people are able to take back our vote.