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by WILL FOLKS
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South Carolina’s election commission (SCVotes.gov) agreed this week to an amended contract to purchase several thousand new voting machines for the Palmetto State – a deal thrown into temporary disarray last week over a disputed agreement negotiated by the agency’s former executive director.
“We have amendments to the original contract,” commission chairman Dennis Shedd said during a special called meeting held at SCVotes’ headquarters on Monday morning (October 20, 2025).
Shortly after outlining the amendments, Shedd and his fellow board members voted unanimously to empower the agency’s interim director, Jenny Wooten, to enter into the new deal.
“We’re going to authorize and direct Jenny to sign the necessary documents, which are the amendments to the contract,” Shedd said.
Commissioners ultimately approved a deal for $33 million – more than $5 million more than Knapp originally represented to them – for the purchase of approximately 3,000 DS300 scanner/tabulator machines, which are manufactured by Omaha, Nebraska-based Election Systems & Software (ES&S).
Last week, Shedd touched on the voting machine contract as one of several issues uncovered from the tenure of former director Howie Knapp, who was ousted from his post last month.
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“The contract was beyond what we authorized,” Shedd said, referring to Knapp’s original representation that the voting machine deal would cost taxpayers $28 million.
Shedd further indicated Knapp was not forthright with commissioners about how the machines would be paid for.
“I had no idea this (contract) would be financed through a third party,” Shedd said. “If (Knapp) had come to us, I would have done it differently.”
Knapp’s failure to level with commissioners wasn’t limited to the contract, according to the chairman.
“Do you get a sense of maybe how he operated? How he didn’t tell us about things?” Shedd rhetorically asked those in attendance at Monday’s meeting. “He controlled that budget and the way things were presented to us.”
To recap: Knapp was fired last month by a majority vote of 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).
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Both of those investigations are ongoing, as is a separate probe of Knapp being conducted under the auspices of S.C. inspector general Brian Lamkin.
According to Shedd, Knapp created “a toxic and perhaps a hostile work environment” during his tenure as executive director – an environment FITSNews has explored in graphic detail.
While SCVotes is moving forward with the amended contract to purchase the voting machines, Shedd made it abundantly clear he still had questions about the deal Knapp negotiated – and the multi-million dollar discrepancy between the price originally quoted to the commission and the one taxpayers are now on the hook to pay.
“I’d like to know where that money went,” Shedd said. “I’d like to know who made money on that contract. I’d like to have an accounting on where all that money went.”
Shedd specifically noted during his remarks to fellow commissioners that he was interested in knowing what, if any, agreements lobbyists for ES&S – led by Hobart Trotter – may have had with Knapp.
Shedd and his fellow commissioners aren’t the only ones interested in Knapp’s dealings with SCVotes’ vendors. According to our sources, scrutiny over the $33 million voting machine deal is one of many lines of inquiry currently being pursued as part of the S.C. Office of Inspector General (SCOIG) investigation.
While multiple investigations into Knapp’s conduct continued, Shedd and Wooten both affirmed the agency’s commitment to open dealing with the public moving forward.
“Things have happened here in a way that weren’t transparent,” Shedd said, adding that under the tenure of interim director Wooten “we’re being as transparent as we can possibly be.”
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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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