The South Carolina State Election Commission (SEC) voted 4-1 this morning to authorize Executive Director Conway Belangia to execute a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division (DOJ), ending more than a year of legal battles, legislative interference, and public standoff over the state’s voter registration list.
The one dissenting vote was commissioner Joanne Day, who commented when asked why she voted against that she had constitutional concerns.
The agreement, which Belangia signed yesterday and which DOJ Acting Chief of the Voting Section Eric V. Neff had already countersigned on April 23rd, requires the SEC to transfer South Carolina’s complete statewide Voter Registration List to the DOJ no later than five business days from April 28th which is approximately May 5, 2026.
As stated in the MOU, SEC will transmit voter data through DOJ’s encrypted Justice Enterprise File Sharing system (JEFS). Social Security Number digits (which was one of the main privacy concerns) will be transmitted in hashed form. Hashing is a one-way cryptographic process that converts data into a fixed-length digital fingerprint that cannot be reversed or decoded. According to the SEC’s press release, the DOJ will receive a fingerprint, not the number itself.
The data fields DOJ is receiving are full name, date of birth, residential address, and voter registration number. For the sensitive identifier field, the MOU’s Section II cites HAVA requirements and lists either a driver’s license number or the last four SSN digits. Section VI then specifies that the last four SSN digits will be transmitted in hashed form.
ERIC Receives More Personal Data Than The DOJ
The SEC distributed a Voter Data Elements Comparison chart at yesterday’s meeting, and it deserves a closer look.
South Carolina already shares more voter data through more channels than what DOJ is getting here. The Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a nonprofit data-sharing organization of which SC is a member, receives full name, date of birth, residential address, mailing address, both the driver’s license number and the full Social Security Number, voter registration number, county code, registration date, gender, last voted date, voter status, last update to voter record, and email and phone number when available. That data is then accessible to all of their member states and the District of Columbia.
Let that sink in. ERIC, an organization with a well-documented reputation for maintaining dirty voter rolls, gets the driver’s license number AND the full SSN, unredacted, shared across a 25-state consortium. The DOJ, under this MOU, gets one or the other, with the SSN digits hashed.
South Carolina also sells voter data to purchasers, listed as ‘VRL Sales Data’ on the chart, that includes voting history going back two primary cycles, primary ballot selections, and whether a voter participated in the two most recent general elections. According to the SEC’s comparison chart, none of those fields were will go to the DOJ.
So, it begs the question, why has our state handed ERIC both sensitive identifiers in full who shares that data with third parties and then spent nearly a year fighting the federal government over a hashed copy of four digits? The privacy concerns were real, but they were selectively applied.
State Election Commission Controls Removals
According to Section VIII, the DOJ will analyze the VRL and notify the SEC of any voters it believes may be ineligible. The SEC then has 45 days to review those findings. Voters are removed only when “identified by [DOJ] and confirmed by the SEC.” The SEC retains independent authority over every removal decision.
Belangia’s transmittal letter to Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon credits DOJ for adopting language that accurately reflects the SEC’s independent role in making eligibility determinations, suggesting the original draft did not make that authority as explicit.
Future With the DOJ
The SEC has until approximately May 5th to transmit the data. If the DOJ’s analysis identifies potential ineligible voters, the SEC will be notified securely and will have 45 days to review and confirm any removals before resubmitting an updated list to DOJ for verification.
The MOU runs through December 31, 2028, with either party able to terminate with 90 days written notice.
The Commission’s stated goal, per Belangia’s letter, is to ensure “every eligible citizen has the opportunity to register to vote and participate in fair and impartial elections with the assurance that every vote will count.”
The Transparency Contradiction
The same state apparatus that resisted this data-sharing agreement for over a year, citing privacy concerns and the sanctity of voter information, continues to block Cast Vote Records (CVRs) from public FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) access. Attorney General and gubernatorial hopeful Alan Wilson continues to block access to this previously FOIA-able documents and has maintained that position even as citizens and public interest groups have pressed the issue. Wilson doubled down on his CVR opinion during a public forum in Lancaster on April 10th.
Cast Vote Records show how individual ballots were tabulated and are the audit mechanism that allow the public to independently verify election results, the very thing that a healthy republic should welcome scrutiny. CVRs were available to the public in South Carolina until former state election director Marci Andino asked Attorney General Alan Wilson in August of 2020 to issue an opinion to state that CVRs contained private information and could no longer be subject to FOIA.
The SEC will hand the federal government a hashed copy of 3.3 million South Carolinians’ voter registration data, the last four SSN digits, transmitted through a DOJ system. But a spreadsheet showing how ballots were counted? Still off-limits to the citizens who cast them thanks to Alan Wilson.
Pennsylvania Makes CVRs Public On The Same Day
On the same day that the SC Election Commission announced its MOU with the DOJ, Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court ruled that spreadsheets of raw data associated with every ballot are public records. The Democratic-majority court said its unanimous decision was a way to “satisfy the voting public that our elections are safe, secure and accurate” while preserving the state constitution’s requirement that votes remain secret.
The court ruled that cast vote records “are spreadsheets of raw data pulled from the cast ballots. They are not the physical ballots contained in the ballot box,” and therefore are public records, concluding that “this interpretation does not destroy the secrecy of the vote any more than a tally of all votes from a specific election.”
Somehow, a blue-embattled state like Pennsylvania will make their CVRs public along with many other states, but bright red Attorney General Alan Wilson continues to refuse.
Who Negotiates For the Voters?
Pennsylvania’s highest court ruled unanimously yesterday that citizens have the right to see how their ballots were counted. South Carolina’s AG decided in 2020 that they don’t, and has spent every year since defending that decision. The SEC just proved it can negotiate hard for the privacy of voter data when it wants to. The question now is…who negotiates for the voters?
Palmetto State Watch Foundation will continue to monitor developments at the State Election Commission. If you have a tip, contact alaina@palmettostatewatchfoundation.com
Article posted with permission from Palmetto State Watch Foundation
