It’s no secret the 2020 election was controversial. Election laws and procedures were thrown out the window in the middle of a pandemic, causing confusion and distrust surrounding the results in several states across the country. As a result, people are paying closer attention to how elections are conducted in their own states.
Fortunately, here in South Carolina, we didn’t have the problems that other states had. Mainly because when Democrats brought their nationally orchestrated effort to try and sue their way to victory here, the South Carolina Republican Party (SCGOP) immediately fought back against those efforts in our state.
That’s the first lesson for Republicans: You need to be ready to defend election integrity immediately. No matter what — no matter who gets squeamish about it.
Within 24 hours of those suits being filed, we had a plan to intervene and fight back in court. Ultimately, the SCGOP fought all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and won a complete and total victory. As a direct result, our election laws were protected before votes were cast.
Unfortunately, other states didn’t do the same, and election laws were cast aside by judges or bureaucrats. In many cases, voting had already started when Republicans in other states began fighting back. That hesitancy cost them dearly.
But just because South Carolina didn’t have problems that other states did in 2020, doesn’t mean it couldn’t in the future. So, starting at the beginning of the legislative session after the 2020 election, the SCGOP began working with state legislators to help tighten South Carolina’s election laws to prevent what happened in other states.
That brings us to the second lesson: Use the energy that heightened awareness brings to make necessary changes. As a member of the Republican National Committee’s Election Integrity Committee, I had a firsthand account to what went right and what went wrong across the country in the 2020 election.
Using that information, we created a list of items the SCGOP wanted to see in an election integrity bill for South Carolina. Ultimately, a strong bill passed and was signed into law that included virtually every one of those items.
The new law is full of common-sense measures that make it easy to vote but hard to cheat by banning drop boxes, banning ballot harvesting, and banning third-party dark money, like so-called “Zuckerbucks” from Facebook, from being given to local election commissions.
Additionally, the law now requires the last four digits of a voter’s Social Security number to vote via absentee ballot, and requires a witness to sign, print their name, and provide their address to witness a mail-in absentee ballot. It also requires more thorough and frequent voter-roll cleanups, as well as requiring post-election audits be conducted before a statewide election can be certified.
Another critical provision from the law mandates uniformity among counties by placing local election commissions under the authority of the State Election Commission. Requiring uniformity ensures that every vote is being cast and counted under the exact same standards across the state.
But before these reforms were signed into law, the SCGOP was working to make them become reality, which brings us to the third lesson for Republicans: When you’re in charge, be in charge.
Supporters not only appreciate it, they expect it.
When the SCGOP unanimously passed a resolution calling on the Legislature to pass a bill with these reforms, we didn’t stop there. We worked with legislators on specific language, and then equipped our supporters to become grassroots lobbyists to help get it passed.
It’s another example of the rule that “elections have consequences.” By electing South Carolina’s biggest Republican majority in more than 140 years in 2020, we were able to pass what several organizations have deemed the most comprehensive and secure election law in the country.
Importantly, that’s something Republicans need to keep in mind as we look toward reaping an electoral harvest from a potential red tsunami this November. Our supporters will want us to be in charge and deliver results.
It’s one of the “consequences” of winning. We need to be ready and be bold — especially when it comes to defending our elections.
2024’s Wild Ride (so far)
From the political weaponization of courtrooms, and Trump wrapping up the nomination in record time, to Democrats not allowing anyone to run against Biden, and the earliest presidential debate in history, to an assassination attempt and an incumbent presidential campaign withdrawal, it’s been a roller-coaster ride. I feel like I need to put some money down on the Gamecocks to win the national championship in football this year. Stranger things have happened.
Trump literally took a bullet for the campaign – and then got up calling on his supporters to “fight!”, instilling Republicans all across the country with a newfound sense of unity and resolve. The Republican party is now as unified as it’s ever been in modern history.
I’ve been a state party chairman for almost eight years and have worked in politics for over thirty-five years. I’ll take an enthusiastic voter over just a voter any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Enthusiastic people don’t just vote, they work. They make calls, knock doors, give money and get the guy sitting next to them at church or at work to vote too.
As Napoleon once said, “Moral is to the physical as three is to one”. Enthusiasm is a force multiplier. You can’t put a price on it.
And who would have thought that Republicans would be financially competitive with Democrats, but here we are, complete with the world’s richest man pledging to invest 45 million per month until Election Day in a third party effort to focus on voter turnout in battleground states.
Democrats, on the other hand, proceeded to wet the bed again and again over the course of the year with each new poll showing Biden losing to Trump in both national and battleground states. So much so that they threw him overboard for a candidate that not one single person in America has ever voted for President who actually has lower poll numbers than Joe Biden.
No serious person suggests that Kamala Harris would have been the Democrat nominee in any kind of open, competitive political process. She’s a decidedly ungifted politician that had so little success as a presidential candidate that she dropped out of the 2020 Democrat nomination fight before the first vote was cast in Iowa. Since then, the Biden team has largely kept her under wraps, only to see her occasional appearances punctuated by nonsensical “word salads”.
But now that the wagons have circled around her, the question is how long does it take for the Democrats with the most to lose to begin howling in despair again, demanding another change in cast.
Meanwhile, the Democrats’ message has been blown apart in a hail of hypocrisy. The Party that assured Americans that Trump is a would-be dictator and a threat to democracy, first refused to allow anyone to challenge Biden for the nomination, and then decided that 14 million Democrat votes should be ignored and a “more electable” nominee should be installed. How’s that for protecting democracy?
And we haven’t even gotten to the Democrats’ convention in Chicago where they’ll try to make this anti-democratic coronation official. In the same city where they convened in 1968 to replace an unpopular incumbent presidential candidate while the streets were filled with protesters, they’ll convene again this August to replace another unpopular incumbent presidential candidate while the streets will be filled with antisemitic, pro-Hamas protesters.
But events aside, the issues on the ground have not changed, and, as the late Lee Atwater loved to say, “Issues win campaigns”. On most every issue that tops the minds of American voters, Republicans have the edge. From illegal immigration and the border, to crime, the economy, housing and inflation, Kamala Harris owns Biden’s record of failure.
When people aren’t buying what you’re selling, it doesn’t make much difference who the salesman is or what the ad budget may be.
What Biden’s political demise and Harris’ rise represent is the Democrat Party’s final break with working-class Americans. It’s a break that’s been building for years, starting with the Obama Administration, but Biden was the last fig-leaf for the old New Deal Democrat coalition.
It’s the “Californiacation” of the Democrat Party: an abandonment of working-class Americans in favor of cultural, bureaucratic and academic elites, complete with the mixed-nuts of the antisemitic and radical woke left, and a common disdain for anything traditional or overtly American.
It represents an incredible opportunity for the GOP to demonstrate relevance and win over a new generation of working-class Americans, and to build a winning and enduring political coalition.
It’s been a wild ride so far, and who knows where it goes from here. But I think I’d better check those odds on the Gamecocks.