S4E10: Cutting through the noise on changes to the voluntary voting system guidelines with South Carolina’s Isaac Cramer

In this episode, hosts Eric Fey and Brianna Lennon speak with Isaac Cramer. He’s the Executive Director of the Charleston County Board of Elections in South Carolina, as well as a member of the EAC’s Technical Guidelines Development Committee. This committee is currently looking at ways the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines, or VVSG, may be updated in the future.

They spoke about Cramer’s role on this board, the importance of including voices and perspectives from voters of all abilities and about what these new guidelines could mean for election administrations in South Carolina and across the country.

High Turnout, Wide Margins Credits
Managing Editor: Rebecca Smith
Managing Producer: Aaron Hay
Associate Producer: Katie Quinn
Digital Producer: Mark Johnson

Transcription of the episode is as follows:

Isaac Cramer: So, something I never even thought of – and that’s why it’s so awesome to be on this committee and hearing from all the perspectives from accessibility – is if you don’t have an all in one system, you’re really not accessible because of paper. Papers [are] not accessible in itself. You can, if someone has dexterity issues where they can’t pick up paper, it is impossible for that to be ADA. It’s just not – it’s impossible

[High Turnout Wide Margins Introduction]

Brianna Lennon: Welcome back to another exciting episode of High Turnout Wide Margins. This is Brianna Lennon. I’m the County Clerk in Boone County, Missouri, and with me is my co-host –

Eric Fey: Eric Fey, Director of Elections in St. Louis County, Missouri.

Brianna Lennon: And today we’re really excited to have Isaac Cramer. Isaac, you want to introduce yourself?

Isaac Cramer: Yeah, I’m the executive director for the Charleston County Board of Voter Registration Elections here in South Carolina, and definitely been excited to one day – and now finally, it’s here – be on your podcast. Just gotta say – a little jealous, because you had it and you did it, and now everyone gets to enjoy the content you put out. So, thanks for having me. I really love the opportunity to be here.

Brianna Lennon: Yeah, we’re really excited to have you here and talk about a variety of things, especially related to some national elections related things and technology, but first we will start off by talking about your path into elections. So, can you talk a little bit about how you ended up in elections and what you do?

Isaac Cramer: I think, like most election officials, I did not set out to be in this field at all. I actually was on the other side of it. I did some campaigns, and, out of college, worked for the attorney general in Indiana, and really just didn’t see this as a pathway, and, really, I got the opportunity to apply for this job because it had political science as one of its listed degrees at the county government, and I said, “Wow, I could do that. I mean, I have a poli-sci degree. Let me apply for that. It has to do with elections, and I’m familiar with, you know, getting people elected. So, obviously, I think I could do this job.” And I applied to be the, at the time, it was in-person, absentee and vote by mail absentee for Charleston County to manage that operation, and, thankfully, I got the job and really had no idea.

You know, on the politics side of it, when you’re campaigning – think about this, you’re getting to election day, and then you get there and you win or lose, and you’re celebrating at 10 p.m., 11 p.m. at night, or you’ve lost, and you kind of just go home sad. But I was always on the winning side, so I just, like, kind of understood, like, “Okay, we’re celebrating.” You wake up the next day at whatever time you want to wake up, and you kind of go to the office if you want to go in the office, and it’s just like, everybody’s kind of on this, like, emotional high, like, hangover from this victory you had.

And I came on the other side of it through elections, and I was like, “Wow, we have to be up at 5 a.m. the next day after sleeping for only three hours, and we have all this canvassing things and provisional ballots,” and I’m like, “What is this? Like, it’s not over?” It’s like, “No,” you, in South Carolina, we were over, you know, the Friday after the election, which is really short, but still, it’s like, what? There’s no, like, breathing, and there’s no break. You’re just, like, full blown, keep going after a whirlwind. So, very different on this side of it.

Eric Fey: Isaac, can you talk a little bit about the structure in South Carolina? From where I sit, my perception is South Carolina is a relatively top down state, meaning that the state board, you know, issues a lot of direction and guidance and things like that. So, explain a little bit, if you can, how that shakes out in South Carolina.

Isaac Cramer: So, in South Carolina, we run elections through boards. We’re not actually, we don’t actually have a Secretary of State or Lieutenant Governor that oversees elections. [it’s] actually a state election commission, and they’re charged by law to, basically, oversee the process and the policies and procedures and how the counties are doing in the election process. But really, when you drill down, the counties actually run elections. Each county has their own board. That board appoints the executive director who runs the operations – so the elections director, and it’s only one singular job for me. There’s not multiple different avenues, like some states where you have the county clerk who has multiple other responsibilities on top of elections. We only handle elections at our level. So, at the end of the day, our local boards have a lot of oversight, and the state kind of provides the umbrella structure, but really the counties conduct elections. We do all the work to make sure that our elections run smoothly, efficiently, and then the state will provide the resources. They help counties that are smaller and a lot of new directors who have never done it before. They will jump in to help with training and giving them manuals and things like that.

Brianna Lennon: I guess, just to jump into some of the other work that you personally do, but you sit on a lot of boards and task forces and things like that, and one of those is related to the VVSG [Voluntary Voting System Guidelines]

Laughter

And there’s been a lot of attention because of executive orders and conversations about the potential SAVE act and things like that, about what the future of our voting equipment requirements are going to be, whether we need to stop using ballot marking devices if they are using barcodes and things like that. Can you talk a little bit about what your experience has been like navigating that, and maybe some of the conversations that have been born out of this new attention. Because, for a while, we have done episodes with people about, you know, the slow progression, and finally, getting the new standards for VVSG 2.0, and now it’s like everything on steroids.

Isaac Cramer: Yeah, I would say, even with all the steroids and the things to accelerate this process, I would say we’re still really far out, and why I say that is – there’s only one vendor out there that would comply with VVSG 2.0. So, we look at the broader discussion here, and, if you’re not an election geek like myself, like you both are, you know, VVSG is the voluntary voting system guidelines that is voluntary, but as we know as election officials – most states actually require the adoption of VVSG in selecting voting equipment. There are some, like South Carolina, there’s some kind of, I guess, ways around it through what the law says, you know, you have a certain amount of time to comply with it, or you can give a reason for why you can’t. But I would say part of the broader discussion here is – do these guidelines need updating from 2.0 to 2.1?

And the executive order – I kind of outlined what that would look like – which does not eliminate barcodes. Just want to get a little, you know, I think a lot of discussions even on TGDC [Technical Guidelines Development Committee] have been about barcodes and eliminating them, but the EO [executive order] actually does not eliminate them permanently. They actually give the ability for voters with disabilities who need accessible voting equipment, they can use equipment that prints out a barcode or QR code, and I think the committee has discussed at length the need for members of the accessibility community to weigh in, to give feedback, because this is what it’s really all about. Is the barcode discussion and around accessibility and what needs to be updated for accessibility purposes, and I’m not that expert, you know, our office, we actually have partnered with our accessibility community here in Charleston County to get feedback because we need that. We’re not, nobody in my office would speak to that community as a first hand experience, and also, nobody’s been, had the proper education or been immersed in that enough to speak to it. So, that’s why that feedback is so important, and I hope over the next several weeks, we keep getting that feedback and then more – a better refined product can be put out there that TGDC Committee members can look at.

So, I know there’s a lot there. I know that I’m on the record of talking about barcodes, and I just said as a personal thing, as an election official, that is the number one thing that we get when voters – in South Carolina, we are mostly a vote in person at your polling place or early voting location state. So, voters are interacting with the barcode more than other jurisdictions across the country, and the number one feedback we always get when a ballot is printed is the barcode, and the issue that a voter has that the equipment is reading the bar code and not the actual selections that they have made, that you physically can see it’s reading the barcoded text. So, it’s just, a  reality – and I think the future, as we’ve heard on those calls, is all the voting equipment vendors are not going to be using barcodes and QR codes anymore. They’re going to be headed toward – oh man, now I’ve blanked on the acronym, but OCR [Optical Character Recognition]. They’re going to be doing OCR, which reads the text of those ballots. So, that’s where we’re headed, and I think all the new equipment coming out over the next probably couple years will be that kind of technology, and, obviously, the implementation of that is probably five years. As we know, you can’t just all up at once, every jurisdiction in this country buy voting equipment that’s updated.

Eric Fey: Isaac, taking a step back from that explanation you just gave. Can you explain a little bit more – not in depth. Be a little more broad as to, so what committee are you on? So, you’re on the EAC board of advisors. The board of advisors gets two appointments to the TGDC – Technical Guidelines Development Committee, I think, is yet another acronym. So, that’s the committee you’re talking about right now that you’ve had these meetings with. So, explain a little bit about what that committee is and what its role is,

Isaac Cramer: Yeah, so the TGDC assists the EAC in developing the voluntary voting system guidelines. So, they’re actually, by the charter, they will look at the VVSG and provide the updates that  – and there’s been debate about this too, and being new to this, you know, hearing like, “Does the TDGC actually bring these changes and call for this development or updates? Can the EAC and NIST just do that?” So, NIST is actually the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and they’re part of this process as we look at voting equipment and testing, but really at the end of the day, it’s creating the standards by which voting equipment is tested and what features it has to have or can’t have.

And that’s why it’s really important, when we look at VVSG that those specifications and requirements, they have to be updated as technology updates, or as things may be seen as being vulnerable, or things, you know, aren’t – they, they’re not working out, or whatever that case could be. As that evolves, those updates need to happen. The executive order, as we’ve mentioned, has sped up that process and another update to 2.0, which just passed several years ago. The 2.1 is to clarify whether barcodes – it’s the bar codes – and make that more explicit that can only be used for voters with disabilities, and it should not be used for all other voters who would not qualify for that category of assistance needed.

So, we are the committee that reviews this, and then it goes on to the next committee. The EAC, I believe, has four different FACA [Federal Advisory Committee Act] boards, is what they’re called, and I’m not going to go through that acronym because I don’t know if I could do it. It’s some federal boards and board of advisors is part of that. I know there’s a technical guidelines committee, or technical… Yeah, see, we’re all lost here in election world when the federal government starts getting involved, then we got way more things we got to know about. But, at the end of the day, VVSG is something we review on the TDGC and provide the updates necessary for the standards by which voting equipment is tested.

[High Turnout Wide Margins Midbreak]

Brianna Lennon: It seems like the outside reporting that I’ve seen on the meetings, and what you’ve described about, you know – we’re still not moving very quickly and things like that – there’s obviously a push for more urgency. There’s a push to try to get people moving faster on these things. I’m wondering if you can provide your perspective of, like, why it is helpful to move kind of incrementally on this? And you’ve talked a little bit about it, but just giving you an opportunity to say your piece about, like, why it matters that we have this process in place and that we’re not just wholesale throwing things out and trying to replace them with something that might not be ready.

Isaac Cramer: Yeah, I mean, the first, when all of this was created – and I think it’s just the knowledge of of the process – you never want to move so quickly where you haven’t had the proper input. So, every level of input necessary helps the process, helps any guidelines that are created to be reviewed, to be commented on. So, we’re just the first step, I mean, there’s multiple more steps and layers that are outlawed in HAVA, the Help America Vote Act, and these systems, when they get updated, they have to go through. And that’s just a safeguard. That’s a good thing. I mean, we, we’ve probably all said, at some point, on one of our so far three calls on TDGC is we need more members of the accessibility community to weigh in, and the EAC and NIST have said there are opportunities already for that through public comment, through several members that are on our committee so far, but have not been properly appointed yet, but they can stand in and comment. Those comments are being listened to. They can’t necessarily vote, but they can at least provide the feedback. So, I think that is important. I mean, I’m getting the – I’ve said this to several people, you know, from my vantage point, I think we’re, the EAC – and this is going to go forward whether TDGC votes yes or no – I think they’re taking it as advice, but I don’t think it’s going to stop the movement forward.

So, just as an update, as well. I mean, by middle of September, it probably will be out of the TDGC’s hands because the next meeting will be voting on the EAC’s language that they’ve taken from all the feedback and made edits to the original VVSG, 2.1 draft. So, we will be voting probably in the next several weeks on that.

Brianna Lennon: Speaking of – because I just want to make sure, I think that there are a lot of counties out there, county clerks, election directors, that [are] either not fully paying attention to what’s happening at the national level, or they just don’t understand it, and so, they’re just kind of waiting for somebody to interpret it for them, and given that you are an executive director and would have to implement things – does anything in the conversation that’s happening affect Charleston? Are you going to have to get new voting equipment? Is that something, because you mentioned that you get a lot of questions about the barcodes, like, what does it look like to you when you think about what you’d have to change in the office in order to comply with it, if there were a change, and how much money would it cost?

Isaac Cramer: Yeah. So, South Carolina’s is specifically statewide. Everybody uses the same voting equipment, and it’s purchased by the state election commission through the state funds, appropriations process through the state house that will fund any future voting equipment. I think there’s, you know, being at the county level – so I have a perspective from the county level, but ultimately I can’t implement any changes to the voting system. I don’t get a say in that. So, the state election commission will go through that process, and they have their own interpretation on what this EO does. Even if VVSG  is updated, I’m sure they have looked at it, as well. And I believe they don’t think that – even just through conversations we’ve had at a recent conference, you know – even if there is a change to VVSG, you know, we’re still on a 1.0 system – we use the Express votes from ES Nest.  We have DS300s. Those are the tabulators in the precincts. And I don’t think that would be changing with the EO or VVSG updates, but if they were to purchase new voting equipment, then I believe VVSG would apply, and, from my understanding, that may happen in the future. We bought the voting equipment in 2019. We’re at six years right now. So, you know, there’s been talk, potentially, of updating the voting equipment. We went from the DS200s tabulators to the DS300s last year. So, those have all been updated, but the actual marking process has not.

But, which has been outlined in TDGC, and something I never even thought of, and that’s why it’s so awesome to be on this committee and hearing from all the perspectives from accessibility – is if you don’t have an all-in-one system, you’re really not accessible because of paper. Papers [are] not accessible in itself. If someone has dexterity issues where they can’t pick up paper, it is impossible for that to be ADA. It’s just not – it’s impossible. Now, yes, someone can assist you. Someone could help you through that process, which is allowed through state law here in South Carolina, we have multiple laws for assistance, but, at the same time, you know, if you’re truly being ADA compliant, you would have an all-in-one system.

Which, currently to the 2.0 standard of VVSG, there’s only one product out there, and I believe it’s HART. So, your question of, “What happens?” I think that’s the hardest part in all this. I think there’s a lot of interpretations, and I think they vary state by state, you know, what it means to do a statewide change of any voting system – and now in South Carolina, the last upgrade was over $55 million, I think it was in the $50 or almost $60 million for all 46 counties, and we are not a big state, you know, comparatively to other regions of the country. So, you know, where do we go from here if VVSG 2.1 passes and then the commissioners vote on that and it gets updated? I think we’ll all sit back and have further conversations on what looks like for the United States as a whole.

Eric Fey: Isaac, I think you made an important point that just because a new version of VVSG is in place doesn’t mean all the current election equipment in use out there across the country all of a sudden can’t be used anymore. I mean, everybody across the country is using something prior to VVSG 2.0, as you mentioned, there’s only one system certified, and it was just certified very recently. So, I don’t – I could be wrong, but I don’t think anybody’s implemented that new system yet. So, I think what has a lot of us in the election administration community maybe a little worried or on the lookout for are, as you mentioned, VVSG – the first word is voluntary. States can choose to have different flavors of VVSG. Will there be state legislatures that want to change requirements somehow to maybe adapt to the executive order or not? And I know you are very active in your state association and in your state capital. Do you foresee any changes in South Carolina, or have there been conversations in your state capitol about amending anything?

Isaac Cramer: You know, I think sometimes when we look at changes that cost a dollar amount that is extensive, I don’t want to lose that as an opportunity to properly – not just educate but have a dialog, a real conversation, with our legislators. Because, you know, at the end of the day, if we’re doing a voting system update in a statewide implementation, that might not be a bad thing in some states. That might be a great thing. It might be an opportunity to get new technology. But that’s a funding conversation, and a lot of times in that funding conversation, a lot of those costs are passed on to the counties or municipalities. In my case, you know, yes, I really appreciate that the state purchased, you know, voting equipment for the entire state, and that was funded through the General Assembly, but then the counties have to pick up those ongoing costs to maintain the voting equipment. So, it’s a huge conversation that we have an opportunity to kind of press a reset button on, I really believe, and gives us an opportunity to advocate for our needs, and it brings that broader conversation to light.

It’s not just the election equipment we need updating. It could be poll worker pay, and when you start adding these costs, maybe the legislators kind of understand what it requires to run an election now or what the costs are to the counties or here in Charleston, specifically. So, South Carolina, which you asked about, you know, really, there hasn’t been a lot of talk about it. I don’t think it’s really on a lot of radars, and I say that because I just don’t think this VVSG update is really getting much attention. I’m surprised about, I thought there’d be more articles written about it, or more dialog happening – not just here in South Carolina, but other states. I know that it’s been on our minds, elected officials, like that’s front and center, but legislatively, I don’t see any moves to that or trying to pressure a change.

Eric Fey: Just as a bystander, I’ve seen you become very active in the election administration community relatively quickly, and I was just wondering if you would be willing to speak to – obviously, you see value in doing that and being active in your state legislature, being active in NACo [National Association of Counties], EAC advisory boards, you see a value in that? Can you explain why? And would you encourage other election officials to become more active in some of these organizations that have an influence on, you know,what we do day-to-day running elections?

Isaac Cramer: Absolutely. We all have – I tell this to everyone. We have a story to tell. Each one of us. Put politics aside and viewpoints. I think we all have a unique perspective in what we do and how we even got to the position, I mean, we opened the entire segment about, you know, “Who am I? Where did I come from? What did I do before this?” And the reality is, all of us have that story, and it might be different, and that’s a connection point. I love connecting with people, and one of the things I really got to see on the other side of election administration was the elected officials. So, when it comes to my state of South Carolina and the legislature, you know, I built relationships with our legislators by being brutally honest, by inviting them in, by giving them my cell phone number and saying, “Hey, we may not always agree, but give me a call when you’re talking about legislation,” you know, “here’s my number.” I get calls from legislators from across South Carolina that have nothing to do with Charleston County, but they call me and they have a question, and it might be the most – what we might consider the most like out of out of the left field question that you are like, “Really?” But I take the time to answer it, and I take the time to talk about it, and that builds trust. Get involved locally, but don’t neglect getting involved nationally because I think you will be exposed to awesome initiatives that are happening in small communities, large communities across this country, and then you get to know the awesome people behind it, and then you just have a bunch of friends that you’ll have forever, like, I saw in the chat group for my first election center event back in July of ‘2. But, yeah, definitely love the the atmosphere that it brings to have all those awesome, intelligent people in the same room

Brianna Lennon: You’ve been listening to High Turnout Wide Margins, a podcast that explores local elections administration. I’m your host, Brianna Lennon alongside Eric Fey. A big thanks to KBIA and the Election Center for making this podcast possible. Our Managing Editor is Rebecca Smith. Managing Producer is Aaron Hay. Our Associate Producer is Katie Quinn, and our Digital Producer is Mark Johnson. This has been High Turnout Wide Margins. Thanks for listening.