shared her stance on why she voted in favor of Vic Rawl's protest. After reading that, a reader of the blog named Zach Croft, executive committee member of Saluda County's Dems, wanted to share his views.
Fellow Democrats:
The vote by the Executive Committee last week to uphold the controversial results from the United States Senate race has been criticized heavily by members of our party, many of whom question the logic we used in upholding the results. I would like to respond to those criticisms today, and particularly to the article by Susan Smith, the Executive Committee member from Georgetown County.
Let me begin by saying that as someone who was a supporter of Jim Rex, I have enormous respect for Mrs. Smith. Her contributions to our campaign and to the party as a whole are enormous, and I think that her vote to overturn the results – much like the votes of all who joined her – was sincere and had the best interest of our party and state in mind. I have a great deal of admiration for those who will stand up in front of their fellow Democrats, an audience and national media to vote in the minority. This kind of strength is what makes the Democratic Party so remarkable, and I praise all who voted their conscience by recommending a new primary vote for their integrity.
That said, I thoroughly disagree with their decision, and I believe the Committee reached the appropriate result in its 38.5 to 7.5 vote. I would like to outline some of the reasons I chose to vote in favor of upholding the results as they stand:
1. The Rawl Campaign did not prove that enough votes were tampered with to change the outcome of the June 8th primary.
The standard for ordering a new primary is simple: Are there enough disputed votes in question to change the outcome of the election?
The margin of 30,509 votes separating Mr. Greene and Judge Rawl required that the Committee find enough votes in question to change the outcome of the race. In this case, that meant finding 30,510 questionable votes. While there was interesting evidence and expert testimony to suggest that some machines might have malfunctioned, there was no “preponderance of evidence” (the standard in a civil proceeding, which protests function as) to suggest that there were 30,510 erroneous votes. (Here is where I would like to address a misconception that caused great confusion amongst Committee members on the evening of the protest. In order to overturn the results, there must have been 30,510 erroneous votes found. Some members were of the opinion that 15,255 was the magic number in question, because they were operating under a formula where every erroneous vote found was subtracted from Mr. Greene’s total votes and added to Judge Rawl’s vote total. That is not the standard for dealing with this type of situation. Every vote deemed invalid by the Committee would have been subtracted from Mr. Greene’s total, but it would not have been added to Judge Rawl’s total by default. Therefore, the Committee needed to find 30,510 erroneous votes; we did not).
We did not have sufficient evidence to know with any degree of certainty how many erroneous votes existed, and to overturn a primary vote just because we did not like the outcome would have been a remarkable slap in the face of the voters. The evidence we did have was fascinating, and led us all to question the integrity of the overall electoral process in South Carolina. Is it in the best interest of our state to have machines that lack a paper trail? Absolutely not. Is it in the best interest of our state to have machines that are connected to the internet in some cases? Absolutely not. Is it in our state’s best interest to have machines susceptible to potential malfunction or manipulation? Most definitely not.
All of the points raised by the Rawl Campaign were significant, but none of them settled the issue that the Democratic Party Executive Committee convened to address last Thursday. Our task as a Committee was simple: determine whether or not there existed a preponderance of evidence that 30,510 erroneous votes existed in the United States Senate Primary. We did not find compelling evidence to this end, and we voted by an overwhelming margin to uphold what the legitimate – though baffling – will of the people appears to be.
For those who refuse to back Alvin Greene in November, I understand your frustration. He has been charged with a felony, he refuses to campaign for himself and he is eccentric at best. However, all of those shortcomings do not mean that he is an illegitimate nominee. Anecdotal “evidence” such as Greene outperforming his absentee totals and winning areas we expected he might not does not make the case that Rawl won on June 8th. Until evidence is produced showing that 30,510 votes were manipulated or erroneously cast for, he is the nominee, rightfully – albeit strangely – elected by the people.
2. Mrs. Smith asks “I wonder why it is easy for us to believe that voting fraud took place in FL in the 2000 presidential election, took place in OH in the 2004 presidential election and in many other well documented elections -- but won't recognize voting machine fraud in our own state. Without a paper trail, electronic voting will always be a risk:
The Executive Committee never stated that voting fraud was impossible in this situation. However, I must caution people that there was no accusation of fraud by the Rawl Campaign. In multiple instances throughout the proceedings, Walter Ludwig and other witnesses refused to say that fraud had occurred. Instead, they chose to use words like irregularities, malfunction, or abnormalities. If even the Rawl Campaign was unwilling to clearly state a view that fraud had occurred, there is no way the Executive Committee could have come to a reasonable conclusion that such fraud occurred. There was no evidence suggesting fraud; all evidence pointed to an unusual result in which there were more questions than answers. There was not, however, a clear indication that the results were wrong.
Congressman Clyburn, whom we all know and have deep admiration for, has suggested that fraud is a possibility. However, he has stated that this is a belief of his based on a highly unusual result. He has not offered any evidence of fraud, and no such evidence was brought to the Executive Committee by anyone from the Rawl team during the protest.
3. Mrs. Smith noted multiple times that she saw “reasonable doubt” that the results were correct. I, too, saw reasonable doubt that the results as certified after June 8th were correct. However, the standard for an Executive Committee protest hearing is not whether or not the results stand beyond reasonable doubt.
The standard is whether or not the moving party (in this case, the Rawl Campaign) shows a preponderance of evidence that the number of questionable votes exceeded the margin of victory (in this case, that there were 30,510 questionable or invalid votes). They did not show that, and there was no preponderance of evidence to point to. Had the individuals who voted using a standard of “reasonable doubt” voted using the appropriate standard, I feel that they would have likely joined the majority.
4. Mrs. Smith brings up the Democratic Party rules where it notes that the Executive Committee is to investigate “fraud and illegal practices”. While that is certainly part of the definition of the Committee’s charge, the meeting on June 17th was for the purpose of determining whether or not the primary results for United States Senate were invalid or not. Any matters pertaining to Mr. Greene’s personal life, or dealing with his filing fee, were not under the Committee’s jurisdiction during this hearing.
Those investigations are left up to a court of law and the Federal Election Commission; the Executive Committee’s only charge in this situation was to examine whether or not the results from the June 8th primary for United States Senate were valid in light of the Rawl protest. We did that, and any further situations involving Mr. Greene are to be decided on another day. If he is convicted of his charges, I hope he will be taken off the ballot; however, I do not believe he can be forcibly removed from the ballot simply because the charges exist or because we fear that it will be too late to replace him once the matter is resolved. There is in our nation a presumption of innocence, and to throw that presumption out the window simply because our preferred candidate – who was my preferred candidate as well – did not win, goes against all that the Democratic Party stands for.
Though I respect the emotion behind Mrs. Smith’s appeal to ensure that Mr. Greene does not embarrass the party, he has been given the right to be on the ballot in November unless or until evidence is produced that he committed fraud or violated the law. In the meantime, the Executive Committee has adequately completed the only task set before it: the examination of the June 8th primary results. We were given no further jurisdiction in the protest hearing, and it would have been a disservice to the people of South Carolina for us to assume powers that we lack. Should a hearing come to the Committee involving Mr. Greene himself and not the primary results, I am sure we will all examine everything that is brought before us. However, I voted to uphold the primary results because that – and that alone – was what was at stake in the hearing last Thursday.
Many of us wish the results on June 8th would have been different, and a lot of us are still scratching our heads trying to figure out how certain things happened the way they did. The Rawl Campaign no doubt wonders how Mr. Greene really won. The Rex Campaign no doubt questions how Senator Sheheen was able to reach nearly 60% of the vote when so many expected a runoff. The Burton Campaign must wonder how Ben Frasier was finally able to win an election of any kind. There are many questions around the state, and few of them have been answered.
I personally believe that something went wrong in the U.S. Senate primary. However, there is a profound difference between a personal believe and a preponderance of evidence. Republicans often have personal beliefs: personal beliefs that WMD exist in nations they don’t like, personal beliefs that politicians they don’t like are anti-American, personal beliefs that Ronald Reagan was a champion for fiscal conservatism. Personal beliefs are not the cornerstone of the Democratic Party; logic and sober judgment are. As much as we would like to have Vic Rawl running for Senate, that is not what the votes came to show at the end of June 8th. How it happened remains a mystery, but in the ruling of the Executive Committee based on the evidence presented, it happened legally.
The primary season is now over and the November matchups are set.
