By Jessica Gresko - The Assocciated Press
The Supreme Court on Monday reinstated the requirement that South Carolinians who vote by mail in this year's presidential election have
a witness
when signing their ballots.
Democrats tried to stop this requirement due to the coronavirus pandemic, but Republicans defended it, claiming that this measure would prevent fraud.
Voters in South Carolina have already begun submitting their ballots, even as the Court reinstated this restriction.
More than
200,000 absentee ballots
have already been mailed
and 18,000 have been returned, according to the state electoral commission.
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The Court said that votes that were already cast before Monday's decision, and received within two days after this order
"cannot be rejected for not meeting the witness requirement."
South Carolina Republican Party Chairman Drew McKissick applauded the decision.
"Despite the efforts of Democrats to take advantage of a pandemic, and use it to meddle in our electoral laws, they lost," he said in a statement.
"We are pleased that the Supreme Court has reinstated the requirement for a witness signature and recognized its importance in helping prevent voter fraud."
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Meanwhile, the leader of the Democratic Party in that same state, Trav Robertson, expressed his disappointment.
"Our hope is that
no one catches COVID-19 by trying to find a witness.
We are disappointed, but the elections have consequences," he said in a statement.
South Carolina has been asking for witnesses for absentee voting
since 1953.
Under current law, voters who mail their ballots take an oath printed on the return envelope confirming that they are eligible to vote and that the ballot inside it is yours, among other things.
The oath has to be witnessed by another person who has to sign under the voter's signature and write their address.
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State and national Democratic Party organizations and several individual voters condemned the requirement pointing to the pandemic, and other parts of state election law.
In fact, a judge blocked the witness requirement before the state primaries in June.
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After the primaries and the response to the pandemic, state legislators made changes to the state's electoral law, including
allowing all residents to vote absentee in November.
But they left the requirement of witnesses in place.
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District Court Judge J. Michelle Childs, appointed by President Barack Obama, stopped the requirement for witnesses for this presidential election late last month, claiming this
may increase the risk of some voters contracting the virus
and is demanding let other already infected voters take the risk of exposing witnesses.
About
a dozen states
require vote-by-mail ballot envelopes to be signed by one or more witnesses or a notary.
