By admin 
About one year ago, the South Carolina Election Commission voted 3-2 to fire the agency’s leader, Howard Knapp, after nearly five hours of meeting behind closed doors.
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The private meeting allegedly violated the state’s open meeting law, a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of South Carolina in state court Thursday says.
“I don’t think that any violation of FOIA is trivial, and this one certainly isn’t when a decision that that has such gravity as this is made without giving the public an opportunity to scrutinize the decision being made or the reasons for that decision,” said Allen Chaney, legal director with the ACLU of South Carolina.
The five-person, governor-appointed commission tasked with overseeing the state’s election officials ousted Knapp, its executive director, in Sept. 2025 after meeting in executive session for several hours. At the time, no reason for his removal was given. The vote was held in public.
Knapp was later arrested by the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division and charged with misconduct while in office, embezzlement and use of position for financial gain.
The ACLU of South Carolina alleges the Election Commission did not provide proper notice about the contents of the closed-door session, did not give Knapp a chance to conduct an adversarial hearing in public and were polled about their decision before the public vote was held.
It also alleges Dennis Shedd, the former chairman of the Election Commission, contacted other members before the meeting and “urged Commissioners to take adverse employment against Mr. Knapp.”
The private meeting included the interrogation of several witnesses, and the commission went to “extraordinary lengths” to keep it from the public, the ACLU argues in the suit. Knapp was not given the opportunity for the hearing to be held in public, violating state law, according to the filing. Evidence to support those claims were not included in the initial filing.
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An agenda for the Sept. 2025 meeting listed several topics, including the approval of past minutes and new business items, an accountability report, the budget, voter outreach, upcoming municipal elections and a data request from the Department of Justice, The State previously reported. It also said the commission would discuss “personnel matters” in private, according to the lawsuit. That was not a specific enough disclosure to satisfy state open meeting law, the ACLU argued.
“Just the words personnel matters are far too vague and broad to satisfy the specific purpose obligation under FOIA,” Chaney said.
A spokesperson for the state Election Commission declined to comment.
“We are aware of the complaint, and as a matter of policy, we do not comment on ongoing litigation,” said Election Commission spokesperson Sydni Bain.
Efforts to gain a comment from Shedd were unsuccessful.
The lawsuit also alleges that Knapp resisted the federal government’s request for access to the state’s voter rolls and “provoked ire” among President Donald Trump’s allies. The U.S. Justice Department asked for personal information of South Carolina’s voters in 2025, which the Election Commission later provided earlier this year with stipulations.
The Election Commission has seen turnover of leadership in the last year. Since Knapp’s ouster, Conway Belangia, a longtime election administrator, was hired to lead the agency.
Shedd resigned from the commission in January. Gov. Henry McMaster appointed Robert Bolchoz, an attorney, to chair the commission. Linda McCall also resigned from the commission days after Knapp’s removal, citing in a letter to McMaster “what went on” with Knapp’s ouster and other personal reasons.
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