On June 6, the South Carolina legislature passed SB 2, which makes it easier for a candidate to get on a partisan primary ballot. Current law says if a candidate for state or local office fails to file both an electronic copy, and a paper copy, of a statement of economic interests, the candidate can’t appear on a ballot. The bill changes that. Candidates who fail to file the statement of economic interests are subject to being fined, but their ballot status will not be injured. Last year, over 200 candidates were kept off primary ballots.
Currently, candidates file with the party chair of the party whose nomination(s) they seek. The party chair then forwards that to county or state election commission, so that they could be placed on a primary ballot.
SB 2 switches that, so candidates now file with a county or state election commission, who then sends a copy to the parties, who certify the candidates are qualified.
This may tend to cut down on con-fusion in South Carolina, since candidates for nomination by convention-nominating parties will also file directly with the state. An application must include the party pledge that the candidate will not campaign against the party in the general election if they lose the nomination.
The problem in 2012 was that a party chair was expected to verify that a candidate had filed a statement of economic interest (SEI) before an application of candidacy was accepted. Since the application of candidacy were not lawfully accepted, the candidate was disqualified from the ballot.
Incumbents already had an SEI on file, and did not have to make their annual update until April 15, two weeks after the campaign filing deadline.
New candidates were expected to include their SEI with their application of candidacy. This worked fine for 20 years or so, until South Carolina instituted electronic filing of SEI, but left the provision for new candidates intact. The South Carolina Supreme Court ruled that the legislature must have known what they were doing – for example making sure that persons new to filing ethics reports were doing so. In reality, it was a section in the Ethics Code that was actually controlling elections. Candidates were being told to file electronically, and also given the understanding that they had until the April 15 deadline, rather than the March 30 deadline for candidates.
SB 2 moves the annual filing deadline for SEI to March 30 for all persons, so it matched the candidate filing deadline. And it also provides that everyone files electronically directly with the ethics commission.
The text of the bill is at the link below. Interestingly, it changes language in the old law to allow parties that nominate by primary to switch to nomination by convention with a 3/4 vote of the convention and subsequent approval of the change by the party’s primary voters at the next primary election.
http://www.scstatehouse.gov/sess120_2013-2014/bills/2.htm