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One year to the day after the South Carolina Election Commission (SEC) board voted 3-2 behind closed doors to fire Executive Director Howard “Howie” Knapp, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of South Carolina went to court on his behalf.
The ACLU of South Carolina Foundation filed suit against the commission on September 17, 2026 in the Richland County Court of Common Pleas. The complaint, signed by ACLU-SC legal director Allen Chaney and attorney Meredith McPhail, accuses the commission of violating the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in how it removed Knapp as Director.
The ACLU states that Knapp resisted the Justice Department’s demand for South Carolina’s voter data and that his resistance “provoked the ire of President Trump’s allies in South Carolina, including the Governor and some members of the SEC.”
According to the ACLU, the state’s former top election official lost his job for standing up to Trump. What the ACLU never mentions in its eleven-page complaint is the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) investigation Knapp was under when he was fired. It never mentions the eleven criminal charges Knapp now faces, which include misuse of his government position, using taxpayer dollars (including vehicles) for personal means, and alleged association of wiretapping. It never mentions his deputy and alleged mistress, Paige Salonich, or the recording device she is charged with planting in the room where his fate was decided.
Palmetto State Watch Foundation has covered the State Election Commission for over four years, and the evidence we have recorded tells a very different story.
The Chairman Said It Had Nothing to Do With Voter Rolls
In his September 2025 statement, former SEC Chair Dennis Shedd said the commission fired Knapp out of a desire for new leadership. He also said the decision was “unrelated to the conduct of any election in South Carolina.”
A month later, at the commission’s October 15, 2025 meeting, Shedd said that Knapp’s position on releasing the voter data was similar to his own, which was that the information could be released with a strict agreement to keep it secure. Shedd said the firing had nothing to do with the data negotiations.
The chairman, who the ACLU is accusing of orchestrating a pro-Trump ouster, said on record eleven months ago that he and Knapp held essentially the same position on the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) request. Shedd resigned from the commission in January 2026 and was replaced as chair by former DHEC chair Robert Bolchoz.
It seems that the complaint points a similar direction. According to paragraph 26, Shedd accused Knapp of colluding with opposing counsel in Crook v. State Election Commission, the privacy lawsuit filed against Knapp’s own agency on August 29, 2025. We have seen no evidence that proves or disproves that accusation; however, it is an interesting statement of fact that the ACLU included.
The Timeline Hypocrisy
The ACLU completely undercuts its own theory in its complaint. Paragraphs 1 and 20 date the DOJ’s demand for South Carolina’s voter list to 2025. Paragraph 27 alleges that “after becoming Chairman in 2024,” Shedd separately contacted commissioners about terminating Knapp.
What the ACLU conveniently leaves out is that Knapp was being investigated a second time by law enforcement, this time over allegations of misconduct. The Attorney General’s Office requested SLED to investigate these allegations on March 29, 2024, which Palmetto State Watch Foundation exclusively reported in January 2025.
According to the ACLU’s own account, the original push to remove Knapp began before the federal demand it now claims caused his removal. How can you be retaliated against for resisting a request that had not yet been made?
What Happened to the Voter Rolls After Knapp
If Knapp were the last line of defense between South Carolina voters and the federal government, the floodgates would have opened the moment he was gone…but they didn’t.
After the South Carolina Supreme Court struck down the lower court order blocking the release, negotiations between the SEC and DOJ continued for another six months. As reported by Will Folks, several GOP legislative leaders weighed in against the feds during that time.
As we reported in April, the commission voted 4-1 to authorize Executive Director Conway Belangia to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division. Commissioner Joanne Day dissented over constitutional concerns.
Under the MOU:
- Data moves through DOJ’s encrypted file sharing system.
- The last four Social Security digits are sent in hashed form.
- DOJ can flag voters it believes may be ineligible, but the SEC has 45 days to review and voters are removed only when the SEC confirms it.
- DOJ may not share the information with any other agency.
- The state will not automatically remove voters DOJ identifies as ineligible.
The terms of the MOU ended Calhoun County voter Anne Crook’s privacy lawsuit, the same case Shedd allegedly accused Knapp of colluding in. It was dismissed May 21 after the MOU met her requests and made the remaining issues moot.
The post-Knapp commission delivered exactly the “strict agreement” Shedd said he and Knapp wanted. The privacy guardrails the ACLU credits Knapp with defending were negotiated and signed by the people who replaced him. Makes you wonder why the ACLU’s complaint never mentions the MOU…
Who Were Knapp and Salonich?
The ACLU is holding Knapp up as a bastion of election integrity, but our readers know his record on transparency.
Under Knapp, the State Election Commission fought citizens who sought Cast Vote Records through FOIA, ironically the same system the ACLU is claiming the SEC violated. SC Safe Elections sued over denied CVR requests and the case dragged on for nearly two years before it was dismissed. As we previously reported, the plaintiffs had spent around $100,000 in attempts to save the 2022 auditable election results and the SEC turned around and sued the grassroots group for suing them.
During the 2022 primaries, citizens reported broken security seals on tabulators. According to a FOIA response Palmetto State Watch obtained, Knapp then reported those citizens to SLED and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Under Knapp’s reign, the SEC’s spending was out of control. Before he took office, SEC travel spending ranged between $17,000 and $20,000 a year. By Knapp’s final year in power, FY 2025, it had reached $152,300.35. That’s not even counting the Legislative Audit Council’s report that explained how the “unsound” SEC spent nearly half a million dollars in FY 22-23 on ten brand new SUVs, bringing their total fleet to 18 vehicles.
Then there was the master lease. The legislature had refused to fund new election equipment months earlier, yet the deal committed taxpayers to more than $30 million of it. The figure climbed from $24.5 million, to $28.8 million, to $32 million, to somewhere around $33 million. That deal has never been the subject of criminal scrutiny.
Paige Salonich was Knapp’s handpicked deputy. A FOIA obtained by Palmetto State Watch Foundation shows Knapp requested a 12% raise for her “effective immediately” within 24 hours of his own termination. The request was denied because it exceeded her pay grade. She was earning nearly $142,000 at the time and the raise would have pushed her to nearly $159,000, above Knapp’s own $150,000 salary. FITSNews has reported that investigators found evidence of an alleged affair between the two in their offices, which several internal sources have confirmed similar details to our team.
Before joining the State Election Commission, Salonich taught English for more than a decade in Lexington County School District One and Two. She had no background in election administration when Knapp hired her as a training coordinator in November 2021 at $54,930 a year, according to her personnel file. Seventeen months later, in April 2023, she was Director of Training and County Support Services, earning roughly $80,000. By October 2024, she was deputy executive director. By the time Knapp was fired, her salary had climbed to $141,788, just shy of the $143,300 ceiling for her pay grade.
The Charges
The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) arrested both election officials on October 24, 2025. Howard Knapp faces eleven charges: eight counts related to using his official position for financial gain, one count of embezzlement of public funds, one count of misconduct in office, one count of accessory after the fact.
Paige Salonich faces one count of wiretapping, to which charging documents allege Knapp attempted to remove the device.
Probable cause affidavits allege Knapp and his family misused state owned vehicles for personal gain and charged taxpayers $5,482.74 for the fuel.
The wiretapping charge stems from the day of the firing. According to her termination letter, agency security cameras captured Salonich placing an unauthorized recording device in the SEC’s training room where commissioners voted to end Knapp’s tenure. Charging documents allege Knapp called SEC employees in attempt to remove the voice-activated recording device from meeting room.
Salonich also has a pending civil suit against the commission, alleging it leaked private information about her to the press.
Inside the Wiretap Hearing
A PSWF reporter was in the Richland County Judicial Center on August 18, 2026 when Knapp and Salonich appeared before Circuit Judge Heath Taylor.
The hearing lasted less than fifteen minutes, and neither defendant said anything for the record. Joe McCulloch once again represented Howard Knapp and Jim Griffin represented Paige Salonich. Creighton Waters, chief attorney for the Attorney General’s state grand jury division, argued for the state.
Waters stated for the record that a video provided in discovery shows Salonich placing the device and that it ran for about eight hours where it “purportedly” captured the executive session. The state has not listened to the recording because of the privileged information it may contain, and the Attorney General’s office had SLED return it to the SEC for review.
The commission, through outside counsel Thomas Limehouse, is now seeking a protective order before the recording is turned over in discovery. Neither the judge nor the defense received the proposed order until shortly before the hearing began.
Salonich’s attorney Griffin said that after ten months of litigation and a subpoena, he still has not seen any of the recordings. He argued that the election commission meetings are public meetings that any member of the public may record.
Knapp’s long-time attorney McCulloch suggested Knapp and Salonich may have been unlawfully excluded from the September 17 meeting and described the executive session as a “kangaroo court” of sorts. Limehouse then volunteered that newly found data appears to show someone activating the microphone or camera during an unspecified executive session. McCulloch responded that both defendants had the right to be present, and the right to activate something if they did.
Judge Taylor left it to the attorneys to agree on protective order language. McCulloch has since told The Post and Courier he and prosecutors are “closing in” on the evidentiary issues, but no trial date has been set.
Same Argument, New Courtroom
The similarities between the August hearing and the September lawsuit are nearly impossible to miss.
In August, Knapp’s criminal defense attorney argued in open court that his client was unlawfully excluded from a closed session he likened to a kangaroo court. One month later, the ACLU filed a civil complaint alleging that Knapp “was not allowed to attend the executive session.”
The complaint also describes what happened behind that closed door in considerable detail: sequestered witnesses, armed guards, numbered exhibits, a printed text chain. It does not say where those details came from. Two commissioners voted against the firing, several staff witnesses were questioned that day, and then there are the two defendants who have nothing to lose. There are plenty of people who could have told the ACLU what happened.
And to add to the irony…The ACLU lawsuit asks the court to force the release of any and all recordings from the executive session. The only recording of that session discussed in open court is the one Salonich is charged with making illegally.
Left Wing NGO’s Only Mobilize to Subvert Our State
The ACLU is a far-left leaning organization that has done irreparable damage to the moral foundation of the American culture since it was established in 1920. Due to their lawsuit in 1948, they removed Christian instruction from public schools (McCollum v. Board of Education). In the 1960s, they successfully removed prayer and Bible reading through two other lawsuits (Engel v. Vitale, 1962 and Abington School District v. Schempp, 1963). The ACLU was a primary architect of the legal framework for the sexual revolution which has resulted in the pervasion and normalization of same-sex marriage, late-term abortions, and continues to fight for the “rights” of pedophiles, child rapists, and murderers, just to name a few.
South Carolina deserves a strong, transparent, and morally grounded election director who reflects the same Biblical values that founded the Palmetto State. Howard Knapp has never fulfilled any of those characteristics and his record just continues to speak for itself, now with the ACLU at his defense.
Palmetto State Watch Foundation will continue to monitor all issues pertaining to the State Election Commission and relevant criminal proceedings that taxpayers pay to litigate. If you have any tips, please email alaina@palmettostatewatchfoundation.com