Charleston Currents

Post Tagged with: "voting"

BRACK: State should make it easier for people to vote

y Andy Brack, editor and publisher | South Carolina legislators should start thinking about voting like people now think about online transactions.

Consider how you bought stuff 20 years ago: You got in your car, went to a store, bought it, lugged it home and stored it away until you used it. It took a long time and there were a lot of steps to make a successful purchase. Then came the Internet.

by Andy Brack · 10/29/2018 · Comments are Disabled · Andy Brack, Views

10/29, full issue: October markets; Election reform; New flight

IN THIS ISSUE | Oct. 29, 2018

FOCUS, Morris: The October effect and the markets
COMMENTARY, Brack: State should make it easier for people to vote
IN THE SPOTLIGHT: Magnolia Plantation and Gardens
GOOD NEWS: Nonstop flight to London to start in April at Charleston airport
FEEDBACK: Send us your comments … share your thoughts
MYSTERY PHOTO: A tough mystery
S.C. ENCYCLOPEDIA: Eugene Robinson
CALENDAR: Just in time for Halloween

by Charleston Currents · 10/29/2018 · Comments are Disabled · Full issue

BRACK: S.C. should buy new voting machines now

By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | State legislators should be demanding, in the loudest possible voices, that our state acquire new voting machines now to assure citizens their votes count. To do otherwise would give a silent nod to a state and national political culture marked by unacceptable levels of spineless do-nothingness.

A call for new machines is not to suggest South Carolina’s 13,000 touchscreen machines don’t work. They do. They’re safe, as we’ve written in the past. But they’re old and past their lifespan.

by Andy Brack · 08/27/2018 · Comments are Disabled · Andy Brack, Views

8/27: Prints in Clay coming; New voting machines; Failing in education

IN THIS ISSUE of Charleston Currents

FOCUS: Prints in Clay events at Gaillard to celebrate spirituals, culture
COMMENTARY, Brack: S.C. should buy new voting machines now
IN THE SPOTLIGHT: Charleston International Airport
MY TURN, Read: Our education system is failing our children
GOOD NEWS: Clemson to host world energy conference her Nov. 12-14
FEEDBACK: Send us a letter
MYSTERY PHOTO: Loggerhead turtle area
S.C. ENCYCLOPEDIA: Rainbow Row
CALENDAR: New exhibit is open at City Gallery in Charleston

by Charleston Currents · 08/27/2018 · Comments are Disabled · Full issue

BRACK: Election systems are safe, but hearts and minds may not be

By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | The Russians will only be successful in meddling with the 2018 elections if we let them do it to us.

The nation’s spy chiefs last week said they expected foreign governments to try to fiddle with election outcomes in 2018, just like the Russians did in 2016. But that doesn’t mean foreign governments will necessarily try to hack into voting systems, change names on voting rolls or disrupt the internal mechanics of voting.

“What they are trying to do is inject themselves [into our election process] and cause confusion in another way – using social media and other means,” said state Sen. Brad Hutto, D-Orangeburg. “They are creating fake news.”

by Andy Brack · 02/19/2018 · Comments are Disabled · Andy Brack, Views

HISTORY: Women’s suffrage in South Carolina

S.C. Encyclopedia | The enfranchisement of women in South Carolina was first discussed publicly during the Reconstruction period. A women’s rights convention held in Columbia in December 1870 received a warm letter of support from Governor R. K. Scott. In 1872 the General Assembly endorsed a petition of the American Woman Suffrage Association to grant women political rights, but it adjourned without taking any specific action. The earliest suffrage clubs in the state were not organized until the 1890s, but suffragists were beginning to receive notice. Writing for the Charleston News and Courier in 1882, the journalist N. G. Gonzales described the typical suffragist as “thirty to sixty, a majority of considerable embonpoint, a majority passable looking, a majority with gray hair and a majority wearing bright colors.”

by Charleston Currents · 02/19/2018 · Comments are Disabled · Features, S.C. Encyclopedia

BRACK: Put an end to gerrymandering

By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | Perhaps it was naivete, youth or idealism. Maybe all three. But I never felt trapped by gerrymandering during a run for Congress in 2000. I believed people from Seabrook Island to Little River in the First Congressional District were ready for someone different.

Today, of course, I know different. I could have been George Washington himself and not won a seat in Congress that year because of the way the district lines favored Republicans thanks to gerrymandering. After two years of work and more than $500,000 raised, I got 36 percent of the vote – the percentage a Democrat typically got in that seat.

by Andy Brack · 02/12/2018 · Comments are Disabled · Andy Brack, Views

BRACK: Let’s be thankful for one of our own, Septima Clark

By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | All South Carolinians – white, black, brown, newcomer and native – can stand to learn more about a real homegrown patriot, the late Septima Poinsette Clark.

The mere mention of her name today invokes reverence in the black community. But white Southerners seem to forget that she was so respected for her work in the civil rights movement that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. asked her to accompany him to Oslo, Norway, in 1964 when he accepted the Nobel Peace prize.

“In a sort of casual way, he would say, ‘Anything I can’t answer, ask Mrs. Clark,’” she recalled in a 1986 memoir.

From 1916 when she was 18 until she was fired 40 years later with 41 others in Charleston County for being a member of the NAACP, Clark was a teacher, first on John’s Island and then in Charleston, McClellanville, North Carolina, Columbia and again in Charleston.

by Andy Brack · 11/20/2017 · Comments are Disabled · Andy Brack, Views