Campaign stunt or concern? SC looking into whether non-citizens received voting forms

A viral social media post. A letter from the governor. A contentious battle for S.C. Congressional District 4.

Are non-citizens in South Carolina receiving voter registration forms or declination forms?

Last week, allegations erupted over social media platform X that a state government office was responsible for giving a voter registration form to a non-citizen, both in person and then by mail. The person’s family member who received the forms contacted S.C. state Rep. Adam Morgan, chair of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus and candidate for the Fourth Congressional District.

Within a week, Morgan had a series of viral posts, garnering more than 400,000 views, a letter from himself and South Carolina Freedom Caucus members “ordering” Governor Henry McMaster to investigate the office and a letter back from McMaster, urging Morgan to provide proof to South Carolina Law Enforcement Division.

This has led to a frenzy of accusations and finger pointing for who’s responsible. Some are asking, who’s the person? And is this really happening in South Carolina? Others are calling it a political stunt or campaign tactic.

Morgan, who is running against incumbent William Timmons in a heated race for Congress, initially posted a photo April 29 of a voter declination form on X along with a message about voter registration forms being given to non-citizens.

“Is the Federal Gov giving voter registration forms to non-citizens,” Morgan’s post read. “Yes, at least in SC. A refugee sent us this form that was given to her in a packet at the Social Security Office in Spartanburg. She asked “Why are they giving these to non-citizens?”

Morgan updated the post in a thread to clarify that the form was given by the South Carolina Medicaid office, not the Social Security Office. The photo of the form, which he called a voter registration form, is actually a voter registration declination form, not filled out. The form can be found online and printed out. The forms are distributed to those who are receiving government assistance and asks if they’d like to vote.

The form doesn’t ask if the person is a U.S. citizen.

He later posted that the agency also mailed more copies forms to them. “None of this is by accident,” Morgan tweeted.

In an interview with The State, Morgan said the non-citizen was from Ukraine and lives in Boiling Springs in Spartanburg County with her sister. When she had gone to the medicaid office, she was given the form, and she then gave it to her sister, confused about what to do with it.

“If you read the form, it doesn’t say, are you a citizen or not, it just says, do you want to register or not?” Morgan said. “So they thought they had to fill out the form and we’re confused by it.”

Her sister mailed the form back to Health and Human Services Office, Morgan said, but at a later date, HHS mailed more copies of these forms to the non-citizen and her sister. That’s when the sister contacted Morgan.

“It’s really just bad for everyone,” Morgan said. “It’s confusing for the refugees, leaving our system in a place where you have potential areas of abuse or fraud.”

Morgan said the stories about policies for the offices are “all over the place” surrounding how these forms are sent or distributed.

“It’s very sketchy that they sent it multiple times, that’s the part that doesn’t pass the smell test,” Morgan said.

HHS released a statement which said as the state’s Medicaid agency, the South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services is required by Section 7 of the National Voter Registration Act Of 1993 to offer voter registration information. The statement went on to read that the office does not believe they should have a role in voter registration, but without the legal authority to make this change, they “remain required by federal law to provide voter registration application forms with each Medicaid application.”

“SCDHHS does not process or submit voter registration forms for Medicaid applicants or members,” the statement reads. “Voter registration applications are processed, if appropriate, by the South Carolina Election Commission. SCDHHS is aware of reports circulating on social media that an individual who was applying for Medicaid coverage as a refugee was sent a South Carolina Election Commission voter registration declination form.”

The statement includes that Morgan had not been in contact with Robert Kerr about the topic.

“SCDHHS is investigating what has been reported on social media. The agency encourages anyone who believes voter registration information was inappropriately distributed by SCDHHS to contact the agency’s fraud department at www.scdhhs.gov/fraud.”

Morgan later posted a letter to X that he had sent to McMaster, where he and other Freedom Caucus members asked the governor to “immediately order all state agencies” to cease distributing voter registration forms to non-citizens,” to update the forms to “include a citizenship question as required by state law,” and investigate “HHS knowingly sending these to non-citizens,” the X post read.

“I think the governor’s office can do that since it’s their agency,” Morgan told The State. “Excited to see what happens from the investigation, the governor’s taking it seriously and make sure that we have as secure elections as possible.”

McMaster responded within hours, and requested that Morgan provide SLED with any and all evidence, documents and information that he possesses.

The letter from McMaster ended with “These are very serious allegations. The integrity of our elections is indeed a top concern. I ask that you give Chief [Mark] Keel your full and immediate consideration.”

Morgan said Friday the family was meeting with SLED to discuss what had happened “early next week.”

“You can ask SLED ‘hey are you all meeting with a refugee family next week about this’ and they’ll say ‘yeah, it’s an ongoing investigation’ and that’ll be proof that the refugee family exists and that we’re doing an investigation into it,” Morgan said.

As of Monday SLED did not confirm there was an ongoing investigation. SLED provided a statement, “SLED has received the Governor’s letter to Representative Adam Morgan and will review the allegations provided.”

When asked by The State about proof, Morgan said the only thing that the family has showed him are the forms, and that the family was looking for the letterheads from the office that were sent to them. He said the proof is two people who saw the form and experienced the situation.

“The election commission and HHS are trying to say ‘oh no we’re required to do this and this is what were supposed to do’ even though that’s now a one-eighty from when I talked to them the other day when they were saying ‘No we don’t send this out.’ And ‘This wasn’t supposed to happen’,” Morgan said in an interview Friday.

On X, not everyone was as convinced that Morgan’s story was true.

“When your campaign stunt leads to SLED investigating you…” an X account that goes after the Freedom Caucus tweeted about the incident.

Chris Slick, a S.C. political strategist, tweeted “Well, go ahead @SCFreedomCaucus cowboys. Cough up the name, @RepAdamMorgan, @evannewman_sc, @rpagesc, and @Jscottpace ?Who is the non-citizen? Where are they from? Tell us.”

“The fact that someone is saying we’re lying about it, we’re literally meeting with SLED next week,” Morgan said to The State. “SLED has already talked to the refugee family. Whatever clown is out there pushing that were doing an election stunt is just ludicrous and honestly obnoxious and everything wrong with politics.”

At the end of his tweet April 29, Morgan wrote “We are set to pass a bill prohibiting non-citizens from voting in SC elections! Stop this nonsense in your state!”

Nearly two days later, the House passed legislation from the Senate prohibiting non-citizens from voting in elections at any level in South Carolina. Morgan attached this vote to the form issue.

“Many said this was a non-issue,” Morgan’s post on May 1 read. “Then we discovered state agencies sending voter registration forms to non-citizens. These “non-issues” keep turning out to be major issues…”

However, the legislation was in the works before last week’s events.

“It has nothing to do with what Adam Morgan did, I’m a little frustrated they tried to make it about that, because, I don’t appreciate something we’ve been working on for several months being hijacked in this intra-party fight over there in the House about the Freedom Caucus trying to politicize something that by the way, wouldn’t have passed if Speaker Smith and the Republican leadership didn’t push for it,” Sen. Josh Kimbrell, R-Spartanburg, sponsor of the legislation that passed the House said.

Kimbrell said the legislation was designed to ensure what California, New York, Washington D.C., Vermont, other states have done would not happen in South Carolina, which is extending the right to non-citizens voting in municipal elections, mayoral races, school board races or others.

“Certain jurisdictions and courts have found that every citizen is a floor not a ceiling, so were just saying only citizens would be able to vote,” Kimbrell said. “This has been going on for weeks. We worked really hard to get it through the Senate. To say it has anything to do with Rep. Morgan’s letter to the governor about the election commission is not true.”

Kimbrell added that he doesn’t believe the forms being distributed is an issue.

“That form is attached to medicaid forms,” Kimbrell said. I don’t view that as an issue right now. That’s not what my amendment was about. My amendment was about preventing this from happening in the future. I think they took an opportunity to say “look what we did.”