By One Vote
What I watched at the State House this weekend, and why South Carolina took a step closer to throwing out the ballots its own troops already cast.
On Saturday morning I sat in the gallery of the South Carolina State House with a handful of other veterans and concerned citizens, watching the Senate debate the new congressional map.
During a break, out in the Senate lobby, I spoke with Senator Cromer. He told me and the veterans I was standing next to that he would be voting for cloture, but that we should not worry, because the votes were not there. He highly doubted it was going to pass. The men standing to my left and right had served this country. We took him at his word, and we let our shoulders drop a little.
Not long after, cloture passed by one vote. 26-18. A senator who had been holding out came over to yes, and that was that.
I understand the position Senator Cromer is in. He has a primary, and he has voters in his district who want this map, and a vote for cloture is how you show them which side you are on. I understand the politics of it. But his performance for those ultra-partisan voters was at the expense of people currently serving. And he did it right after telling a group of veterans not to worry. He treated his real vote as a freebie. He knew the stakes, told us not to worry, then voted yes anyway.
More than 8,000 absentee ballots have already gone out to South Carolina’s military and overseas voters. If the new map passes on third reading tomorrow morning, those ballots no longer match the districts they were cast in. They have to be thrown out and reissued. Reissuing a ballot to a deployed service member is exactly where this whole thing breaks down.
I am a Navy veteran. Nine years on active duty, five deployments, on both destroyers and submarines. I voted absentee in eight of those nine years, and I voted early every time I was able, because I knew I might be unreachable when Election Day came. In President Trump’s first term, after the strike that killed Soleimani, I deployed on very short notice. None of us choose the timing. On submarines, we routinely went months without a port call and without mail. A replacement ballot would never have reached me.
Even with the primary now pushed to August, a second ballot will not reach the thousands of sailors, soldiers, airmen, and Marines who are underway, mid-deployment, executing a permanent change of station, or sitting on temporary orders somewhere across the country or the world. The election calendar does not bend around a deployment, and a deployment does not bend around the election calendar.
This is indeed bigger than the votes that start being cast Tuesday morning. It is whether South Carolina tells its people who serve, and the families who wait on them, that a ballot they cast early and responsibly, cast precisely because they knew they would be gone, simply does not count anymore.
I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Casting my vote was part of keeping that oath. On a weekend when we honor the people who died defending our Constitution, we should not be making it harder for the men and women still serving to exercise the rights those Americans gave their lives to protect.
The third reading is tomorrow morning. If you live in South Carolina, you still have today. Call your senator. Email your senator. Tell them to vote no, and to protect the ballots that have already been cast. We say we support our troops. This is one of the rare moments where saying it costs something, and where it would mean everything to the sailor voting early before hopping a submarine to disappear for a few months, the way I once did.
I will spend part of this Memorial Day thinking about Senior Chief Shannon Kent, a fellow cryptologic technician, who was killed in Syria in 2019 while on mission.
As we saw on Saturday with Senator Cromer, one vote can make all the difference. The least we can do for those on patrol is make sure that after they vote, we count it.
Early voting starts tomorrow, May 26th. Go show Senator Cromer how powerful one vote can be.
Still bearing true faith and allegiance,
Frank
Gilbert, South Carolina
Find information on your ballot as well as polling locations at scvotes.gov. This article was inspired by correspondence I sent to many of our SC Senators over the weekend.
Recommended reading:
Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance