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Spartanburg County Sheriff's race up to five candidates

Spartanburg County Sheriff's race up to five candidates

Yahoo04-06-2025
A fifth candidate has announced his plan to run for Spartanburg County Sheriff.
Bill Rhyne is a former United States Marine who went on to serve as a deputy in the Spartanburg County Sheriff's Office. He later worked for the South Carolina Highway Patrol.
In an announcement on social media, Rhyne said, 'This campaign isn't about politics: it's about making sure our communities are safe, heard, and respected. It's about being present, well-reasoned in our actions, and building a Sheriff's Office that serves every corner of Spartanburg County.'
Filing for the special election to replace former Sheriff Chuck Wright, who resigned in May, will be from June 13 to June 21.
Rhyne joins four others who have declared their plans to run:
Nick Duncan, who served for almost 10 years in the Spartanburg County Sheriff's Office before taking on Wright in the 2024 Republican primary.
Randy Hollifield, who served in the Army before going into law enforcement in 1982 as a member of the Spartanburg County Sheriff's Office.
Andy Clark, a former member of the City of Spartanburg police department who retired from the Spartanburg County Sheriff's Office.
Joseph Hawes, police chief of Pacolet and a former staff member at the United States Department of Defense.
More: 'It's so disappointing:' Spartanburg County residents react to Chuck Wright's resignation
There will be a primary election on Aug. 5. A runoff will take place on Aug. 19, if needed, according to John Baucom, director of Spartanburg County Voter Registration and Elections.
The special election is set for Nov. 4.
This article originally appeared on Herald-Journal: A fifth candidate for Spartanburg County Sheriff emerges
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Man convicted of killing woman abducted from insurance office to be executed in Florida's 10th execution of the year
Man convicted of killing woman abducted from insurance office to be executed in Florida's 10th execution of the year

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Man convicted of killing woman abducted from insurance office to be executed in Florida's 10th execution of the year

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‘Damned if they'll be shortchanged;' Mass. studies equity of payments towns get for state-owned land

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Trump wants states to feed voter info into powerful citizenship data program

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The Trump administration has ramped up efforts to encourage state election officials to use the expanded program. The White House hosted a bipartisan 'fly in' event for state secretaries of state on July 29. Multiple secretaries of state told Stateline that USCIS Director Joseph Edlow, who was confirmed on July 15, spoke at the event. 'The president is very much keyed in on voter list maintenance,' Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, a Republican, said in an interview — echoing other GOP secretaries of state who released statements praising the Trump administration after the meeting. When we disclose information, particularly personal identifying information, we need to have a handle on how it's going to be used, by whom and under what circumstances. – Minnesota Democratic Secretary of State Steve Simon Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat who attended the meeting, said he questioned how the federal government would handle voter information provided to SAVE. 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'We look forward to continued optimization efforts and implementing more updates to SAVE.' Some Republican election officials and Trump allies have long wanted the federal government to take an expanded role in searching state voter rolls for noncitizens. Last summer the Trump-aligned litigation group America First Legal, co-founded by Trump adviser Stephen Miller, encouraged states to submit to the Department of Homeland Security the names of individuals for citizenship or immigration status verification. Some states did just that. Texas, for example, asked USCIS to verify the citizenship of some voters in September, and Indiana asked the agency to verify 585,774 voters in October. The same month, 16 Republican state attorneys general signed a letter criticizing Homeland Security, then under the Biden administration, for failing to work with states on verification. After Trump took office, GOP state officials kept up the pressure. Twenty-one Republican secretaries of state urged Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in February to prioritize SAVE improvements. On April 16, Indiana sued the department in federal court for not responding to its verification request last fall. USCIS announced an overhaul of SAVE less than a week later. As the agency continues to remake SAVE, the tool will soon allow searches using the last four digits of a Social Security number, multiple state secretaries of state told Stateline. The agency confirmed the feature is under development and will be available soon but didn't provide an exact date. The change would mark another significant expansion of the program because most states collect the last four digits when individuals without a driver's license register to vote. Idaho Secretary of State Phil McGrane, a Republican, said SAVE represents a better way to verify citizenship than a state law requiring voters to produce documents. 'I think there's a real opportunity for us to do a lot of this through just sharing of information and I think that's what we're seeing happen,' McGrane said in an interview. But some voting rights advocates and experts on government data caution against an overreliance on Social Security data. The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, a progressive policy nonprofit, has noted that Social Security only began tracking the citizenship status of all applicants in 1978 — meaning the database doesn't include comprehensive citizenship information for older Americans. Additionally, Social Security may not always have up-to-date information on the status of naturalized U.S. citizens. The nonpartisan Institute for Responsive Government also warned in May that since SAVE hasn't used Social Security numbers to verify citizenship in the past, its accuracy and effectiveness are unknown. The success of the expanded SAVE program may also partially depend on whether it has adequate staff and resources, it said. A 2017 Government Accountability Office report found that between fiscal years 2012 and 2016, about 16% of the nearly 90 million SAVE searches required additional verification, which the institute says often translates into federal workers manually checking files. Now that SAVE allows bulk searches, the need for manual checking could rise dramatically. Nick Doctor, director of implementation at the Institute for Responsive Government, said in an interview that a tool confirming the eligibility of registered voters in a way that doesn't burden individuals can be a good thing. But he emphasized that it depends in large measure on SAVE's implementation. 'The changes that have been made to SAVE happened very quickly and, to my knowledge, we haven't seen releases on the level of accuracy of that information,' Doctor said. During interviews, Republican secretaries of state stressed that voters aren't kicked off the rolls because SAVE can't verify their citizenship. Instead, an inability to verify would likely trigger a follow-up process with the voter. 'Just because we get something back from the SAVE database, it's not a cut and dry, especially on those they're not sure about,' Hoskins, the Missouri secretary of state, said. Still, Arizona illustrates why some Democrats worry about any large-scale effort to ask voters — especially longtime, older residents — to prove their citizenship. After the state discovered errors in how it tracked voter citizenship dating back years, election officials are contacting some 200,000 voters seeking proof of citizenship documentation. Some have been casting ballots for decades without incident and many feel targeted, Arizona Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said during a presentation at the state secretaries of state conference. 'They feel insulted when they get that letter,' Fontes said. Charles Stewart III, a professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies elections, said Arizona may actually point to the potential usefulness of SAVE. If Arizona runs its voter roll through the program, a list of 200,000 voters needing citizenship verification would perhaps drop into the hundreds, he suggested. 'There's a lot of good-government reasons to believe that something like this, governed properly and governed with fail-safe mechanisms, could have an upside,' Stewart said. Connecticut Democratic Secretary of State Stephanie Thomas told Stateline that every secretary wants tools to keep voter lists as clean as possible. But the details are important. When she hears of something new, Thomas said she asks whether it's the best option available and whether 'the i's are dotted, the t's crossed.' She said she's asked USCIS a series of questions about SAVE and is waiting on some responses. 'When it comes to voter lists,' Thomas said, 'I don't want Connecticut voters to be a guinea pig.' This story first appeared in Stateline, a sibling site of the Minnesota Reformer and part of the States Newsroom nonprofit news network. Stateline reporter Jonathan Shorman can be reached at jshorman@

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