{"id":95335,"date":"2020-09-15T16:19:14","date_gmt":"2020-09-15T20:19:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=95335"},"modified":"2020-09-15T18:42:43","modified_gmt":"2020-09-15T22:42:43","slug":"the-state-covid-19-absentee-expansion-bill-clears-sc-house-heads-to-gov-mcmaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=95335","title":{"rendered":"(The State) COVID-19 absentee expansion bill clears SC House, heads to Gov. McMaster"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A bill that would expand absentee voting to all registered South Carolina voters in the Nov. 3 general election as a pandemic-related safety measure is headed to the governor\u2019s desk after clearing the House Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>The bill, which passed 115-1, allows \u201cno-excuse\u201d absentee voting, but retains the requirement that absentee voters get a witness to watch them sign their absentee ballot envelope \u2014 a requirement that a federal judge suspended for the June primary, citing the risk of COVID-19 transmission \u2014 and scraps plans to add more ballot drop boxes.<\/p>\n<p>Gov. Henry McMaster has yet to weigh in on the absentee expansion bill, which passed unanimously in the Senate last week, but signed a similar bill the Legislature approved ahead of the June primary.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thestate.com\/article245745600.html\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The SC House expanded absentee voting Tuesday, but rejected calls by Democrats to add ballot drop boxes and eliminate the witness signature requirement <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/OEJmjcYO5n\">https:\/\/t.co\/OEJmjcYO5n<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; The State Newspaper (@thestate) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/thestate\/status\/1305958497109106689?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 15, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A bill that would expand absentee voting to all registered South Carolina voters in the Nov. 3 general election as a pandemic-related safety measure is headed to the governor\u2019s desk after clearing the House Tuesday. The bill, which passed 115-1,<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=95335\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,104,151,619],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-south-carolina","category-health-medicine","category-politics-in-general","category-state-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=95335"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95336,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95335\/revisions\/95336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=95335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=95335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=95335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}