COASTAL OBSERVER

U.S. Rep. John Lewis once said that the vote is precious, it is almost sacred, and it is the most powerful tool we have in our Democratic society.

“We feel like we’re stewards of that most powerful tool. We take that stewardship very seriously. I hope I’ve given you, tonight, a reason to believe we do take it seriously,” said Ron Byrd, chairman of the Georgetown County board of Voter Registration and Elections.

Like many people in the room, Byrd said he had little experience with voting before he was appointed to the board in 2019. He graduated from the University of Baltimore School of Law and spent more than 30 years in his legal career.

Byrd let the audience be the judge after talking about election integrity and the history of voting in the state at a program hosted by the League of Women Voters of Georgetown County at the Waccamaw Library this week.

“I can’t speak for other counties in the state, obviously. I’m not going to try and opine about how much integrity we have. My job, I think, tonight is to lay out the facts and let you all decide as voters whether or not you’re satisfied with what we do,” Byrd said.

Amy Jones, a member of the league, said she had volunteered as a poll watcher with the county following the 2020 presidential election.

She said Americans have a responsibility to get involved in the voting process.

“I just decided that I couldn’t sit on the sidelines any longer, that I needed to be part of our democracy. It was better to be productive than to complain,” she said.

Although she came in with some knowledge of the voting process, Jones said she learned more about inactive voter status and address changes. She said she has high confidence in the board and the process.

“They do an excellent job with all things considered, and they do it with pretty limited resources. I’m grateful for their efforts,” Jones said.

One man in attendance, who declined to give his name, said he recently moved to the area from Greenville and didn’t know much about the voting process in the county.

“It was impressive. They’re very professional, so they have bolstered my confidence a lot,” he said.

Byrd took the audience back to the 1872 U.S. presidential election between Ulysses S. Grant and Horace Greeley. During that time, bribes were called “soap,” he said, because if a constituent accepted the bribe, they had cleansed the ballot in favor of that candidate’s party.

Urban areas had a system called “cooping,” where political gangs would kidnap individuals and take them to different polling places to cast a vote for a specific candidate. 

In most states, the ballot box was made out of glass. Because most people were illiterate back then, he said, the parties created colored tickets with a printed candidate name that displayed who a citizen voted for.

There were five states that voted by voice, he said.

“It was a perfect system, a Petri dish, for bribes, corruption, intimidation, coercion, all those things,” Byrd said.

The U.S. adopted Australia’s secret ballot voting process decades later, where voters cast ballots in private. Massachusetts was the first to adopt it in 1889, and South Carolina adopted it in 1892.

“I told you I wasn’t going to give you any opinions, but I will say I have a strong opinion that I like my current system better,” Byrd said.

Byrd said the county’s board of voter registration and elections does not make the rules about the voting process and follows what the state Election Commission does in Columbia.

“There are very tight laws and regulations that we have to follow as a board, as a staff, in every aspect from that initial candidate filing to certification of the vote by the board,” he said.

Technology is a key aspect of voting today, he said, and the voting machines are not connected to the internet. The voting machines  are provided by the state from Election Systems and Software in Nebraska.

The machines are tested in “every which way” by the board’s staff and zeroed out before election voting. The machines are open for public testing before every election, he added.

“Each and every one of you has a right before election day to come in and test the ballot, test the machines yourself,” Byrd said.

After an election, ballots are sealed, equipment is cataloged and there is a firm chain of custody established, he said. 

The voting machines use thumb drives that are encrypted and print off the voter tape, similar to a cash register receipt, with unofficial election results which is posted publicly at the polling place. The election results aren’t official until the nine-member board certifies it.

Another tape is sealed along with the thumb drive and other ballots that are taken by poll clerks to the elections office in Georgetown. 

Poll clerks have been trained and typically stick with the position. Byrd said the average tenure for a clerk is 10 years.

“They have to go through training before each and every election again, and again and again,” he said. ‘They’re all excellent people. We have a lot of trust in them.”

Aphra McCrea, the county’s director of Voter Registration and Elections, and her assistant then compare the tapes to the thumb drive to post the results in the lobby.

If there’s a race with a margin of victory within 1 percent, the staff must perform a recount. Each ballot is fed into the counter by hand, Byrd added.

“I’ve done it. It’s boring. It’s like watching paint dry with your hand moving,” he said. “Each time it has come out exactly the same. I think it’s remarkable.”