Ep. 14: Isaac Cramer, Executive Director, Charleston (SC) Board of Voter Registration and Election

The Ballot Box Briefing is a weekly segment on Sirius XM’s The Briefing, that examines the issues and storylines at the heart of running an efficient and accurate election. Guests include election administrators, local, state, and federal officials, cybersecurity experts, legal analysts, and members of BPC’s Democracy Program.

Episode 14. Isaac Cramer joined the show to explain how providing a stipend for county election directors would be a significant step in helping to stem election official turnover and discussed an ambassador program launched this year to connect voters with trustworthy and accurate information on elections.

Transcript

The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Voiceover: And now, a deeper dive into the 2024 election from the Bipartisan Policy Center. Here’s Steve Scully with your Ballot Box Briefing. 

Steve Scully (SS): And as you know, every week we take a closer look at election issues, what’s happening on the ground in cities and towns across the country. Isaac Kramer is the Executive Director of the Charleston, South Carolina Board of Voter Registration and Elections. Thank you very much for being with us. Appreciate your time today. 

Isaac Cramer (IC): Thank you, Steve, for having me. 

SS: So here at the Bipartisan Policy Center, we recently did a report that tracked the increase of election official turnover over the last two decades, and I’m curious, in Charleston in particular and across South Carolina, what’s it like when it comes to those officials like you on the front lines ensuring that elections are safe and fair and accurate? 

IC: I mean that is the biggest concern, right? We want to have free and fair elections, safe and secure. And in South Carolina specifically, we have over 70% of election officials who will be brand new for this presidential election. That’s a pretty huge turnover rate since 2020. I’m one of those, but I’ve been in elections within the office. That report also showed a lot of the people coming into the director roles, leading the department and the agencies. They’ve been in elections, which is a good thing. So this will be my first presidential election as a director, but I’ve been doing elections for 10 years now within Charleston County and I replaced a guy who had been there for over 10 years in 2021. So this year there will be a lot of new faces, leading elections in South Carolina. It’s a very important year and we know the public wants to trust the election process and we’re doing everything we can to build that trust with them. 

SS: I want to direct our listeners to the Post and Courier op-ed that was co-written by our team here and your name is also on that, to basically pay election workers more. So what are you calling for? 

IC: The biggest thing is there’s a huge pay gap in South Carolina across the counties. A lot of the rural counties, they have departments of maybe two or three people and they’re making wages that are probably below living wages for someone leading an agency. So they’re making $30- $40-thousand a year. In the op-ed that we co-authored was really highlighting a bill in the State House that would increase the stipend and actually give a stipend to county directors from the state of $10,000 a year. So that would go in addition to their county pay. And that small boost would actually go a very long way in some of the smaller counties where turnover is greater. And one of the things this would do is really show election officials that the state legislature and state leaders really believe in what we do. At the end of the day, it is a job that is more than just conducting elections now. It’s not just making sure you have poll workers, you have to worry about cyber security, you have to worry about administrative barriers to the ballot box. So polling places that are shutting down because they don’t want us to be there anymore, now we have to be creative. Policymakers, when it comes to where to put polling locations, so when we are looking at 2024, you know our hope is we get that pay up for election directors because we don’t want them leaving. We want to have a good solid workforce with solid experience for the for the years to come. 

SS: So as you look back at 2020 and a lot of questions. A majority of Republicans, based on all of the polling from early primary states like Iowa, South Carolina, Nevada, still believe the election was stolen. So how do you deal with that? Because as we have said repeatedly here on this channel and on this program in particular, there’s no evidence of that. And yet the drum beat continues. 

IC: The biggest thing you have to do is build that trust back. You know, what I hear from a lot of local activists or people who may believe the election was stolen or have questions. They always come to me and say, well, we know Charleston is doing it right. And that’s really interesting to me. It’s kind of like Congress, a lot of approval ratings are high for your congressmen or congresswomen locally. But then you look at the national picture and you got low approval ratings. I get that sense of with elections too. They always say, well, no, we know Charleston County is doing it right. But we’re worried about this state or that jurisdiction. But one thing is you have to go to where people are. You have to listen, engage, answer questions. And one of the things I’ve learned through, you know, my decade of experience in elections is you have to be accessible, not just the media, but to voters. So you’re listening to feedback. Helping answer questions and maybe even give them the correct information of how elections are conducted here locally. A lot of people just are, you know, they’re just giving you sound bites that they’ve heard from other avenues and other media streams or, you know, blogs they read and a lot of it is just correcting that misinformation that they have about the election process, and then inviting them in. That’s a big thing for us. We want people to be poll workers and be a part of that process and then when they see the intricacies of what we do to prevent fraud from occurring or to protect the election infrastructure or to really make sure that our elections are secure, then they become believers and they say, you know what? I’m really happy that I did this and I was part of it and now I know that no, the election could not have been stolen. 

SS: Well, that’s my next question. Because can you steal an election? I mean, it’s run by local officials like you. There are observers in the room. Lara Trump, the co-chair of the RNC and the daughter-in-law of Donald Trump, told Newsmax that they’re going to have people inside the election facilities to monitor and watch the returns. They can’t do that, can they? 

IC: So one of the things in South Carolina, you could have poll watchers, you know, people that are appointed by a candidate or party to observe the process. And it’s open observation. But, here’s the thing, Steve, and it’s something that I really stress with local parties. We need people to be poll workers and not poll watchers. You have more authority to follow… so if you’re worried about the integrity of elections, you’re going to want people who are going to follow the law, that follow the processes and procedures. So if people are so deeply concerned about elections, then they need to be the ones signing up to work them. They need to be the ones who are greeting the voters at the polls, checking them in, helping them to the ballot marking devices, making sure that every system is going how it should. I mean, we now need those type of people more than ever. So when the parties are saying we want these poll watchers, well, that’s part of the system. I get that. I agree with that. But the other part of it, we need poll workers, the men and women, we’re going to be signed up to help their local communities. And I had one lead poll worker a couple years ago, who was really distraught over 2020, and I said, you know ‘that did not happen in Charleston or across the country.’ I told him he’s part of the system of checks and balances we have. We have thousands of people who are working on Election Day and for any of these conspiracy theories to happen, you would need to have 100% buy in from every single worker at every single polling location. And we know from factual evidence that has been presented to the courts, but our own evidence that we’ve presented to voters to show them how elections work, that did not happen. Obviously, that did not happen and there was no mass conspiracy. That’s what’s beautiful about this country is our elections are run at the local level. And there’s so many differences, even from South Carolina to North Carolina or to Georgia. And that’s what makes the system great in the United States of election. 

SS: Which is why we are shining a light on all of this. Are you doing anything differently this year than perhaps two or four years ago? 

IC: Well, one of the things we’ve employed here is a voter ambassador program. And we are the trusted source of election information and we want people that get that straight from us and not Facebook or on Instagram or Telegram or TikTok or whatever. We want people to come straight to the source. So what we’re doing is we’re training volunteers, basically community-minded people and equipping them to talk with their neighbors, talk with their organizations and say, hey, this is how elections are running, and here’s information about early voting, how to be a poll worker, how to absentee vote, about Election Day, and we’re equipping them to then take that information to their community. We’re inviting them in. We’re letting them ask us questions and then hopefully they’re using that information we’re providing, and bringing to the greater community. That’s one big thing we’re doing. Another big advocacy we’ve had is getting more professionals signed up to work the polls. I mean county employees, trusted public officials, that the community knows. Say, hey, I know that person from, you know, my interactions with them in public works. Well, now they’re working a polling location, so there’s that trust built up. We’re doing a coalition with veterans, so we’re really trying to make people see that we’re transparent and open about the process and the people working them they can trust them. 

SS: Such great work. We’re talking to Isaac Cramer. He is the executive director in Charleston, SC, of the Board of Voter Registration and Elections. Final question. If there was one thing that you wish people knew more or better understood about elections, just one, what would it be? 

IC: The hours and hours I would say, days, weeks, years of preparation that go into them. You know, gone are the days where you just show up at your polling place and it was set up that night before. You know, even just talking to county officials and local elected officials. You know, there’s so much that goes into an election. We don’t just make decisions the night before. It takes years of meticulous planning. And one thing that we do with every election, it’s not just the equipment that goes out. There’s so much behind the scenes work that goes into an election. A lot of people who work for us temporarily, they’re amazed about how much goes into it. It’s not just, you show up and vote. There’s so many more details. You really could write a book about it, you could probably do a million documentaries across the country about what people are doing to prepare for elections and conduct them. It’s not just the: you press a button and it’s all done. You know, there’s just so many details that are part of this process. And it’s one thing that I love about it. I’m passionate about it. I love voting and giving people that opportunity to cast their ballot, their voice when they go vote. 

SS: Isaac Kramer joining us from Charleston, SC. Beautiful city, by the way. Hey, thank you so much for being with us. I appreciate it. 

IC: Thanks for having me.