South-Carolina
Voting in North Carolina faces some big changes with a Republican-backed bill
DURHAM, N.C. — Major changes are likely coming to North Carolina’s voting rules.
The General Assembly’s narrow Republican supermajority is poised to override Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of an elections bill.
GOP lawmakers say the measure will strengthen election integrity in the state, but in his veto message last week, Cooper said the legislation “has nothing to do with election security and everything to do with Republicans keeping and gaining power.” The governor warned the bill would “erect new barriers for younger and non-white voters” and “encourages voter intimidation at the polls by election deniers and conspiracy believers.”
Perhaps the most significant change in the proposal is the elimination of a three-day grace period for counting mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day. The bill would also expand access for partisan poll watchers.
Public confidence was “greatly undermined” in 2020, a GOP lawmaker says
The mail ballot grace period has been in place since it gained unanimous bipartisan approval from state legislators back in 2009. But Republican lawmakers set their sights on its elimination amid partisan rancor in 2020.
That year, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, voting rights advocates, led by prominent Democratic-aligned election attorney Marc Elias, had sued the state elections board to extend the grace period for mail ballots and to ease rules around the absentee-by-mail witness requirement. The State Board of Elections and Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat and now a 2024 gubernatorial candidate, settled the lawsuit. Consequently, the grace period for mail-in ballots was extended by six days.
The settlement infuriated GOP lawmakers, who accused Stein and the elections board of colluding with Elias and the national Democratic Party to circumvent the legislature’s authority. Their lingering anger was clear in statements made during floor debates over this year’s elections bill, which Republicans say will boost public confidence in Election Day results.
“This confidence was greatly undermined during the 2020 election when our attorney general and director of the Board of Elections, Ms. [Karen] Brinson Bell, entered into a collusive settlement that subverted state law to extend the absentee ballot deadline from three days after the election to nine days after Election Day,” state Sen. Warren Daniel, one of the three Republican co-chairs of the Redistricting and Elections Committee, claimed in June.
Gary D. Robertson / AP
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AP
Daniel and fellow Republicans have pushed this legislation as a way of restoring public faith in the integrity of elections without acknowledging that much of that mistrust is rooted in baseless claims of widespread voter fraud drummed up by GOP candidates and their supporters.
“Everybody knows what Election Day is: It’s when the votes are in, when the counting begins,” Daniel said in June, just before a party-line vote that advanced the GOP-backed bill. “And every day that passes after Election Day with votes still coming in creates the possibility of distrust in the process.”
However, election results in North Carolina are never final or certified until 10 days later, after the statutorily required county canvass. Also, under state law, mail ballots from military personnel and other citizens overseas get counted as long as they are postmarked by — and arrive within nine days of — Election Day.
The GOP bill would give partisan poll observers greater latitude
Among the legislation’s other notable provisions, it would more clearly define — and give greater latitude to — the way partisan poll observers conduct themselves at voting sites. Recognized parties may provide lists of poll observers for sites wherever they have candidates on the ballot.
The parties may appoint two observers for each site and then a smaller number of at-large observers. Under the new bill, the observers may move about the voting area, listen to conversations between voters and precinct officials as long as the discussion pertains solely to elections administration, and go in and out of the site to communicate by telephone with party officers.
Allison Joyce / Getty Images
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Getty Images
Democrats in North Carolina have voiced concerns about voter intimidation and interference by partisan poll observers.
“This is an invitation to remake the role of poll observers into partisan operatives who are intent on intimidating voters and causing trouble,” Democratic Sen. Natasha Marcus said.
After the 2022 primaries, the State Board of Elections surveyed county elections directors about issues at polling sites. Officials in 15 counties reported witnessing poll observers who violated rules of conduct in place at the time by talking to and intimidating voters, frequently exiting and re-entering the voting area to call their party headquarters, and trying to enter restricted areas where ballot data were being uploaded.
But Jim Womack — president of the North Carolina Election Integrity Team, which is a branch of the Election Integrity Network, founded by conservative lawyer and Trump ally Cleta Mitchell — is a proponent of greater freedom for poll observers and said the new legislation “builds confidence across the country and that’s why it’s so important to have poll observers there representing all the parties that can assure themselves that no one party has controlled or manipulated the election.”
Democrats had a hand in shaping the final legislation
Despite their opposition to the changes, Democrats in the state legislature worked with Republican bill sponsors to soften the legislation’s impact.
Democratic state Sen. Mujtaba Mohammed negotiated an amendment to several aspects of the bill, including the scaling back of a provision to require signature verification of absentee-by-mail ballots. North Carolina law already requires two witnesses or a notary for mail-in ballots, one of only a dozen states with witness requirements.
When the new bill originated in the Senate it would have required every county elections office to use signature verification software to validate mail-in ballots. Mohammed persuaded his GOP colleagues to agree to launching a limited, 10-county pilot, starting next year. Furthermore, the bill provides that during the pilot no ballots would be thrown out solely on the basis of failed signature verification.
Mohammed said he is grateful Republicans were open to discussion, even though he still thinks the overall legislation is not necessary because GOP-stoked fears of voter fraud — and the need for more restrictive voting laws — are unfounded. “It’s a bill that’s out there searching for a problem,” he said.
But with a veto override virtually guaranteed, Mohammed and his fellow Democrats will have to take some solace in the limited ways they helped shape the final legislation.
Republicans are flexing new political power in North Carolina
The GOP voting bill comes as Republicans in North Carolina are flexing stronger political power on issues they’ve long sought to address.
GOP legislators have been trying to reshape the political landscape through redistricting and voting laws since they seized a majority in the 2010 elections. But state and federal courts often thwarted their efforts, tossing gerrymandered maps on racial and excessive partisan grounds. An earlier photo ID voting requirement was thrown out as part of an omnibus elections bill that a federal judge said targeted African American voters “with almost surgical precision.”
However, along with reclaiming a veto-proof legislative supermajority after last year’s midterms, Republicans have cemented a 5-2 majority on the North Carolina Supreme Court. One of the new GOP-affiliated justices is Phil Berger Jr., son of the state Senate’s president pro tempore.
Justice Berger and his conservative colleagues have made it clear they are more sympathetic to Republican lawmakers’ positions on court battles over key elections laws than the previous high court’s Democratic majority.
In early 2022, the court, with a 4-3 Democratic-leaning majority, had declared Republican-drawn legislative and congressional district maps to be unconstitutionally gerrymandered with excessive partisan bias. The court-ordered redrawn congressional map turned a heavy GOP tilt into an even 7-7 split between Republican and Democratic U.S. representatives from North Carolina.
It was a landmark decision that only stood until conservatives took a majority on the court after the 2022 midterms. After that shift, Republican lawmakers immediately sought rehearings on the redistricting case as well as a case in which a more recent photo ID law, drafted in 2018, had been thrown out because of its potentially discriminatory impact on Black voters.
The new court granted those rehearings and promptly reversed the earlier decisions. The five conservative justices held that courts had no business policing partisanship in redistricting and that the standards for doing so are too vague. Furthermore, the court reinstated the photo ID law, which goes into effect for this year’s municipal elections.
Republican lawmakers in the North Carolina General Assembly are now poised to redraw more favorable maps once again with a sympathetic state Supreme Court majority unlikely to get in their way.
Copyright 2023 North Carolina Public Radio – WUNC
The 2024 South Carolina high school football season is in high gear and SBLive Sports is the place to follow of the live scoring updates and finals.
Follow the action get the most to date scores by tracking the SBLive South Carolina High School Football Scoreboard. We will have in-game score updates and all of the final scores from every corner of the state. You can also search for full schedules and complete scores from all of your very favorite teams.
Here’s a guide to following all of the South Carolina high school football this week.
STATEWIDE SOUTH CAROLINA FOOTBALL SCOREBOARD
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CLASS 1A SCORES
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SCISA CLASS AA | SCISA A
2024 SOUTH CAROLINA FOOTBALL SCHEDULES: FIND YOUR TEAM
Can’t make it to your favorite team’s game but still want to watch them live? You can watch dozens of South Carolina high school football games live on the NFHS Network:
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We also invite you to visit the brand new South Carolina homepage on High School on SI, powered by SBLive Sports, for the latest news, highlights, analysis, scores, photos and information on South Carolina high school sports. Follow our live game coverage and read our feature stories, breaking news, the latest recruiting news, rankings and much more.
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— Mitch Stephens | mitch@scorebooklive.com | @highschoolonsi
South-Carolina
ESPN's College Football Playoff Predictor has updated again. Here's where South Carolina stands
ESPN.com’s College Football Playoff predictor isn’t perfect because it applies analytics to a situation that ultimately will be decided by a committee of humans. But it does provide a nice guide and discussion piece about which teams have the best chance to make this year’s College Football Playoff.
Because of that human element, the predictor has been updating twice each week, once on Sunday to account for Saturday’s games and again after the latest CFP rankings are released.
[More for subscribers: What latest rankings mean for South Carolina’s College Football Playoff chances]
While the Gamecocks won their game on Saturday and got a lot of help from the teams around them last week, the logjam of SEC teams ahead of them in Tuesday’s rankings is still limiting their upside at this time.
With the committee putting South Carolina behind fellow three-loss SEC teams Alabama and Ole Miss, the predictor currently gives South Carolina a 20 percent chance of making the 12-team field, which is three percentage points lower than its chances in Sunday’s update.
The Gamecocks do, of course, have one more huge opportunity to pad their resume when they travel to Clemson this weekend to renew the annual rivalry in what may be the biggest game in the matchup’s history.
Beat the Tigers, who are currently No. 12 in the CFP Top 25, and South Carolina’s chances of making the playoff jump to 46 percent, according to the predictor.
While that’s just under a coin flip, it’s also 12 percentage points lower than it was in Sunday’s update.
South Carolina is still very much in the hunt but is going to need to win and play very well against Clemson and get more help around it.
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As a reminder, the CFP committee’s top 12 teams won’t correlate exactly with the 12-team field.
The CFP will consist of the top five highest-ranked conference champions and the next seven highest-ranked at-large schools. The top four conference champions will receive the top four seeds and a first-round bye. The fifth conference champion will be seeded by its CFP ranking. If that ranking is outside of the top 12 it will be seeded 12th as the final team in the field.
The teams seeded 5 through 12 will fight it out in the first round with the winners advancing to the quarterfinal round to face the top four seeds.
The Gamecocks and Tigers are set for a noon showdown Saturday in Clemson.
ESPN Analytics uses FPI to simulate the entire college football season 200,000 times. A committee model is applied to mimic College Football Playoff selections and seeding in order to generate a 12-team bracket for each simulation. The most likely CFP teams are provided for user selections. After user inputs, a likely bracket is generated and randomly simulated using FPI.
South Carolina football superfan Chris Paschal writes a weekly column during the season for GamecockCentral called “The Verdict.” Chris is a lawyer at Goings Law Firm in Columbia.
It will have been 44,592 days since Clemson students marched onto our campus with guns drawn when the Gamecocks take the field this Saturday in Death Valley. Back in 1902, Clemson students were mad because of a cartoon that depicted a Gamecock whipping a Tiger.
They marched on our campus, ready to cause bodily harm, over a cartoon. For 44,592 days, Clemson students, fans, coaches, players, and administrators have done everything but declare war on South Carolina to ensure they remain the superior football program in the state.
In 1902 there was more than just the cartoon. In 1902, Carolina beat Clemson.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution put it best following the game: the Clemson Tiger “was so successfully tamed this morning by Carolina. Its tail was twisted and twisted by the sturdy ‘pig skin pushers’ of Carolina, and after two hours and more of hard battle it gave up further fight, for time was called and it became as tame as the proverbial lamb.”
Carolina upset Clemson who at the time was led by John Heisman and was considered one of the great southern football powers. I think that too probably had a little something to do with the hostilities and hurt feelings coming from the Clemson students.
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For the 121st time this Saturday, it will be Carolina and Clemson playing a football game against each other. And while we are past the days of armed invasions, you can’t help but think this Saturday’s showdown may be the most consequential in the series’ history.
There have certainly been big matchups in years past. I am not discounting 1987. I am not overlooking 1979. I understand 2011-2013 featured some great teams. But this coming Saturday, both Clemson and Carolina will still be alive and in contention to bring home a national title.
The chances for both are not significant, but they are legitimate. For the first time in the entirety of the rivalry’s history, both Carolina and Clemson fans can hope that with a win over their hated rival they are one step closer to a playoff berth, which means one more step closer in the quest for a national championship.
Hopefully, the players donning the garnet and black won’t think similar thoughts as they run out onto the field for what should be a cold but sunny day. This game to the players needs to be about one thing: beating a team they are better than.
In continuing the list of firsts, for the first time in roughly a decade, South Carolina will have what I consider to be the better football team when they kick the ball off against Clemson. I think we have a better defense, I think we have a better offensive line, I think we have skill position players that are just as good as Clemson’s (if not better), and I think we have the better quarterback.
But that is what I think. I am an attorney. I am a fan. Clemson players won’t just roll over because I declared we have the better team. In fact, I expect this Dabo Swinney-led Clemson football team to fight like hell in an effort to keep their thumb still firmly on top of us.
Like Clemson fans, I think Clemson football players and coaches also think it is their birthright to beat the Gamecocks. And why shouldn’t they?
Clemson has won eight out of the last nine against Carolina. They have danced on our sidelines in the fourth quarter to Sandstorm, they have talked about how they think they will dominate us; they have talked about how we aren’t the real USC nor are we the real Carolina.
Underneath this façade of respect and admiration for this year’s Carolina team, Clemson fans (and I assume players) quietly assume 2024 will be just like most other recent years. They assume the moment will be too big, they assume the ghosts of years past will be too much, and they assume that by about 3:30 in the afternoon, Carolina will have once again not been physically or mentally strong enough to defeat Clemson.
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But I also think these assumptions, which often manifest themself in a holier-than-thou arrogance, stem from a small shred of doubt and fear that has crept into their minds. Carolina fans had no idea Clemson was passing the Gamecocks as a football program until it was too late. From 2009-2013, Carolina won five straight over Clemson. They assumed Clemson and their bumpkin coach were finally second fiddle to the Gamecocks. They ignored Clemson’s recruiting successes, they explained away Clemson’s double-digit win seasons as illegitimate due to being in the ACC, and they watched Clemson build a juggernaut that had passed Carolina in a very real and lasting way by 2014.
All it took was one whipping in 2014 for Carolina fans to realize that Clemson was now on a path that would destroy Gamecock hopes and dreams for many years to come. That feeling of “oh, crap” that Carolina fans felt in the few weeks leading up to the 2014 Clemson games, I wonder if Clemson fans are feeling that very same thing leading up to this Saturday’s game.
Maybe the thought of Carolina passing Clemson as a program hasn’t even crossed their minds. Maybe it is absurd that I would mention that in this column. Maybe by the final snap on Saturday, Clemson will have soundly defeated Carolina and made me and so many hopeful Gamecock fans look foolish.
Or maybe Harbor, Kennard, Stewart, Hemingway, Sanders, Knight, Emmanwori, Sellers, and so many other Gamecock stalwarts are capable of handling business and showing we do have the better team.
A win this weekend could be program defining. It at the very least could be season defining.
Is Shane Beamer and this Gamecock program always a bridesmaid but never the bride? Or is this team going to let this state and this nation understand that this is a new type of Gamecock football program?
We won’t know until Saturday, but I will be in Clemson cheering Carolina on, with the hope – the belief – that we will see that latter. Let’s tame the tiger once again into the proverbial lamb.
Forever to thee.
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