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by WILL FOLKS
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The chairman of South Carolina’s election commission (SCVotes.gov) took the former executive director of the agency to the proverbial woodshed during a public meeting at its headquarters in downtown Columbia, S.C. on Wednesday morning (October 15, 2025).
Chairman Dennis Shedd – a former U.S. circuit court judge – blasted former agency director Howie Knapp for misleading commissioners, wasting tax dollars, falsifying records and creating what he referred to as a “toxic” and “hostile” workplace at the agency, which is responsible for upholding the fairness, impartiality and accessibility of elections in the Palmetto State.
Oh, and all of that is before we get to a multi-million dollar hole in the agency’s budget allegedly caused by Knapp’s misrepresentations to the commission – details of which prompted an impassioned appearance before the panel by S.C. state treasurer Curtis Loftis.
The litany of Knapp’s alleged indiscretions was voluminous, according to Shedd – and potentially exceedingly costly to the agency (and to taxpayers).
“The former executive director, Mr. Knapp, was removed because of his inappropriate conduct,” Shedd said. “There are a litany of things that Howard Knapp had done that the commission had become aware of: his use or misuse of agency funds for personal reasons, his conspiring with other management-level staffers to falsify documentation the commission was seeking and conspiring with those staffers to lie about the fact they had falsified that documentation.”
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The conduct that led to former S.C. Election Comission director Howie Knapp's termination was the subject of a no-holds-barred monologue by State Election Comission chairman Dennis Shedd during today's board meeting.
— Dylan Nolan (@dnolan2000) October 15, 2025
Get the full story on @FITSNews.com pic.twitter.com/EARU87KBBn
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To recap: Knapp was fired last month by the commission. The following day, FITSNews exclusively reported that agents of the S.C. State Law Enforcement Division (SLED) were investigating allegations of wiretapping involving Knapp. Days later, we exclusively reported SLED’s wiretapping investigation had expanded to include SCVotes’ deputy director Paige Salonich.
This was not the first investigation of Knapp initiated by SLED. At the time of his ouster, he was already staring down a separate SLED investigation into “allegations of misconduct” (.pdf).
“I’m not aware we have been told that investigation is closed,” Shedd said at the meeting. “As far as we know that’s still an ongoing matter.”
Shedd indicated Knapp was the focus of another ongoing investigation – this one led by the office of S.C. inspector general Brian Lamkin, who attended Wednesday’s meeting. Lamkin confirmed his agency was looking into allegations related to “agency operations and procedures,” but declined to elaborate on the inquiry.
Shedd did make clear that Knapp’s “wrongdoing did not touch on vote counting or election management.”
In addition to Salonich – who was fired in the aftermath of Knapp’s unspooling – a third agency employee, former spokesman John Michael Catalano, was recently allowed to resign in connection with an internal agency investigation led by interim SCVotes’ director Jenny Wooten.
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Shedd said he was confident Wooten’s inquiry had rooted out those involved in alleged managerial misconduct at the agency.
“They are no longer with the agency,” Shedd said, referring to Knapp, Salonich and Catalano.
Of interest? Shedd also indicated all three former agency leaders admitted to falsifying documents – and lying about those falsifications to commissioners when questioned.
“The falsification and the agreement to lie about that was all admitted by Knapp and those other staffers,” he said.
Shedd pulled no punches in his assessment of Knapp’s performance as executive director.
“This agency, we found out, had become a toxic and perhaps a hostile work environment under (Knapp’s) leadership,” Shedd continued. “Quite frankly, based on what I’ve read in press reports… if that actually happened here – and I have no reason to say it didn’t happen here – Knapp turned this office into even worse things.”
That’s likely a reference to some of the more salacious discoveries involving Knapp and Salonich made in the aftermath of their termination last month. Knapp and Salonich were reportedly engaged in a romantic relationship with each other, one allegedly facilitated with taxpayer dollars.
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“Since (Knapp’s) dismissal, we have learned of additional misconduct and further details about the misconduct we already knew about it,” Shedd continued. “He and his very close friend and fellow employee, Paige Salonich, were involved in planting a device in this very room to record our confidential meeting.”
“They actually secretly planted a recording device in this room,” Shedd added, referring to the wiretapping allegations currently under criminal investigation.
Arguably the most shocking revelation from the meeting involved a dispute over a $28 million contract to purchase new voting machines – a contract Shedd and other commissioners insist they were misled about by Knapp.
“The facts about that contract were misrepresented to us,” Shedd said. “The executive director misrepresented things to us – and that’s very concerning – and when you put that on top of other things that he hasn’t been truthful about. We were all going on representations made by Mr. Knapp. We now know those representations were not correct.”
According to Shedd, Knapp convinced commissioners of the need to purchase new voting machines – then worked with the office of S.C. treasurer Curtis Loftis to procure a loan for $32 million to purchase them. This loan was to be used as a “stopgap” measure until funds appropriated by the S.C. General Assembly for the machines materialized.
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RELATED | SC VOTES DRAMA
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“We have a person who did not operate in good faith,” Loftis told the commission. “The person in charge, Mr. Knapp, negotiated behind your back.”
While the first payment on that loan was due on September 30, 2025, Shedd made it clear he first wanted to ensure any agreement negotiated by Knapp was legal – suggesting the commission could potentially enter into a “new, independent agreement” regarding the financing of the voting machines.
“We agreed to $28 million and I’m told the loan amount was $32 million,” Shedd said. “I want to know why there’s another $4 million.”
Taxpayers want to know, too…
“I’m concerned about putting my name on anything connected to that contract,” Shedd said. “Those papers Mr. Knapp signed – we never saw any of it. I have very serious concerns about what he did with our authorization.”
Shedd also made no secret of his dissatisfaction with recent editorializing by The (Charleston, S.C.) Post and Courier – specifically columns which have sought to conflate the current scandal at the agency with a recent election lawsuit ginned up by Democrat lawmakers. He confirmed, once again, that Knapp’s ouster had nothing to do with the ongoing debate over South Carolina’s cooperation with a U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) request for voter data.
“The commission does not have a formal position on what we want to do with that request,” Shedd said. “We’ve been so busy defending those lawsuits and trying to clear up and move out staff mismanagement.”
Count on FITSNews to keep our audience apprised on any new developments regarding these ongoing investigations.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.
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4 comments
The question should be asked how this didn’t go through a standard RFP process when you are replacing a key component of the voting system and not just “upgrading”. It’s a 30+ million purchase that unfairly leaves out other companies from being able to bid.
There are so many lies surrounding this new purchase and it only needs more digging to reveal the lies.
FITS and DN, you did not let my most recent, detailed and important, comment on this story through.
Here is what I tried to post on your YouTube Week-in-Review today; let’s see how quickly you delete it:
Will Folks you are a hypocrite and teaching Jenn Wood and DN to become hypocrites if they were not already been so when she came to you.
I’ve been giving you details of the self-dealing at USC, specially of its forever General Counsel Terry Parham’s laundering Saudi money to the late Gehan Sadat and Terry Parham’s promoting the Insurance Reserve Fund which farms out state civil legal business to Terry’s brother, James Parham.
You probably protect USC because your own father teaches/taught there.
Self-dealing and nepotism are also rife between the Shedds and the Wootens. Dennis Shedd’s daughter Sara is, according to her FaceBook page(s), a bitcoin dealer married to a former law clerk of still-sitting Judge Terry Wooten, who also employed Shedd’s son and daughter-in-law as law clerks.
Also, Jenn Wood TOTALLY twisted the aggrieved father’s focus. Mr. Ferderico correctly initially noted that his daughter would have been alive had the owner of the apartment in which she stayed not left his gun unlocked.
What Mr. Ferderico wanted was a law penalizing gun owners who leave their guns unlocked and unattended. That would have been effective, common-sense, and Second-Amendment-respecting law; but you twist everything for your grudge against lawyers-legislators.
And there is NO PROVEN connection between non-homicidal “manual strangulation” and later homicide with fire arms.
Just go coercive-control yourself. You thwarted my efforts to reform Hatchet-for-Hire Heather (whose father also employed relatives of federal jurists) because you, yourself are a Mic-for-Money Mate.
How long will you ignore the detailed and objectively-supported information I have been giving you?
While Strom-Thurmond-Shielding-Shedd and the triple-nepo-Wootens are on a selective-prosecution tear against two SC state government bureaucrats, and while Will Folks and Jenn Woods are on a feigned crusade for “judicial transparency,” I am entitled to renew my question about Dennis Shedd’s BFF Terry Wooten’s alliance with Jean Toal to facilitate Terry Wooten’s second wife’s (Susie Jones Wooten) scheme/success in what is known as occupancy fraud or mortgage fraud and is SO SERIOUS it caused the UK’s Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner to resign. And here in the U.S. it caused indictments against NY Attorney General Letitia James and efforts to remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook from her seat.
I make ABSOLUTELY NO COMMENT on the James and Cook cases because I do not know their facts.
But I DO know SOME of the facts on one Sharon (“Sherry”) Bonner Koon’s scheme to FALSELY pretend a house on 436 Byron Road, Columbia, SC 29209, which she had been from 2002 to 2008 renting to my mother and me had been Koon’s PRIMARY residence all along that period. Koon then sought to have the ENTIRE mortgage on that house forgiven under the federal HAMP assistance program meant EXCLUSIVELY for distressed owner-occupied residences.
The federal statute of limitations on mortgage fraud by Koon may have expired. But South Carolina has NO statute of limitations on ANY crime. I therefore DEMAND an investigation into whether Rasputin of SC Courts, Daniel Edward Shearouse, who curated the alliance between Terry Wooten and Jean Toal knew of Sherry Koon’s mortgage fraud scheme.
And I paste here, too, what I wrote under Jenn Wood’s story on Barabara Ann Mixson’s 40-year work for, and devotion to, the late Libby and Handsome Murdaugh:
Since the atrocity of Richard Alexander Murdaugh’s (“RAM”) 2023 FALSE conviction of two murders is an extension of the great Dr. Marie Faltas’ 2009 FALSE arrests on KNOWN-FALSE harassment charges (which she, thank God, ultimately defeated WITHOUT A LAWYER after a five-day jury trial presided over by none other than Judge Clifton Newman), and since RAM, himself is a descendant of three generations of prosecutors, and since his RAM’s lawyers, Messers. Harpootlian and Griffin, are themselves former prosecutors who are IN TOTAL DENIAL of how they built a rotten prosecutorial system which allows, and EVEN ENCOURAGES, the use of false prosecutions for one improperly-favored party in a civil case to gain unfair advantage in the civil litigation, I remain MORE qualified AND courageous to speak against ALL people and events which built that system that now came back to bite its own builders.
They are reaping what they sowed; e.g., use of the unreliable polygraphs in federal plea agreements; even though NOTHING justifies the false conviction of two murders.
But what I always sowed was science, truth, AND love for my enemies, including the KNOWN-false witnesses against me.
So, I am entitled to paste here (perhaps RAM gets to read it if his failed lawyers allow it) my questions to FITS about the peripatetic Rasputin of SC’s courts, Daniel Edward Shearouse:
BTW, while you are on that feigned judicial-transparency kick, can you find out why FOR THE THIRD WEEK IN A ROW your SC Supreme Court has NOT posted the weekly advance sheets.
Is that related somehow to the upcoming judicial elections? Or to the Rasputin of the SC courts Daniel Edward Shearouse continuing to pull the strings behind the scenes even though a white woman is now SUPPOSEDLY the Clerk of SC’s supreme court and a woman is SUPPOSEDLY the Director of SC Court Administration?
Rasputin Shearouse SUPPOSEDLY retired as SC supreme court clerk but continued to work there for an hourly salary he pretended UNDER OATH he does not know.
Then, Rasputin Shearouse was appointed as Director of SC Court Administration WITHOUT ADVERTIZING or COMPETITIVE APPLICATION. After I pointed that out in a complaint about Kittredge’s nepotism, a woman was named Director of SC Court Administration though the same announcement said that Shearouse will stay as “Interim Director” for an indefinite period SUPPOSEDLY to break the new Director in even though Rasputin Shearouse has had no REAL FORMAL experience himself directing SC court administration.
And while you are at it, can you (or will you) FOIA Shearouse’s payments from POSSIBLE double or even triple office holding? Or is Rasputin of SC’s courts pulling YOUR strings, too? After all, your outlet has been sued and is now being sued my none other than Mark (“The Tiger”) Tinsley.
We shall, God willing, see.
I pray to God that Dennis Shedd and Terry Wooten and their relatives take what I write in my true spirit; and for further explanation, please consider the following:
A totally NON-POLITICAL show I appreciate on NPR is Hidden Brain, a show which cites published PEER-REVIEWD pioneering research on how the human brain works and interviews the authors of those published SCIENTIFIC papers and/or books.
At the threshold, BIOLOGICAL PLAUSIBILITY is a totally separate concept in medical and epidemiological research from intuitiveness. Please accept that for now OR allow me to explain the difference later.
But some scientific research comes out with COUNTER-INTUITIVE results which, if methodologically sound AND biologically plausible, must be accepted and respected.
One of those counter-intuitive results is that the human brain views the “future you” as a foreign person to, not an extension of, the “present you.” That is why it is VERY difficult for the “present you” to make decisions costly to the “present you” but VERY beneficial to the “future you,” who is a foreign person to your brain.
For example, the “present you” sees no reason to give up the pleasure of smoking that cigarette (if pleasure there really is beyond mere habit) for the benefit of preventing that foreign “future you” from getting lung cancer.
But God in His wisdom (or Nature in its wisdom if you are atheist) blessed humanity with the Bell Curve which has extremes on both ends. of intelligence and imbecility, of good and evil, of strength and weakness, of love and hatred, etc.
For now, please accept that I am on the extreme of foresight and creativity and ask the “present you” to forgo the pleasure of insulting me in return for the benefit of the “future you” profiting from my ideas.
And what I am LOVINGLY but forcefully saying in all my Murdaugh-related and SC-Judiciary-related posts is that the legal system built for the pleasure of the “present you” (lawyers, prosecutors, judges, clerks, etc.) is so rotten and unscientific it will come back to bite the “future you” and the “future your children and grandchildren.”
When the Bible tells us that God exacts redemption for “the sins of the fathers” on the children to the third generation and the fourth generation (it does not clarify whether that is concurrent or consecutive) it does NOT depict a vindictive God or some magic or superstitious. It does warn that the systems you build today will affect you and your children and grandchildren tomorrow and the day thereafter.
So, not only the founding generations of Murdaughs, but ALL prosecutors, built a system with vast prosecutorial powers AND the winked-at practice of malicious prosecutions to gain unfair advantages in family-court and/or civil-court litigation, came back to bite Richard Alexander Murdaugh (“RAM”) and will come back to bite the children and grandchildren of judges who pander to prosecutors when the pandering judges are no longer in power.
For the sake of the “future you” and yours, please deny the “present you” the pleasure of insulting me but, instead, take what I write in my spirit of love and foresight.