COLUMBIA, S.C. – Mark Meadows - a former chief of staff to President Donald Trump who was removed from North Carolina voter rolls earlier this month - is still a registered voter in two other states, according to officials and a published report.
Chris Whitmire, a spokesperson for the South Carolina Elections Commission, told The Associated Press the former Republican congressman and his wife registered as voters in the state in March 2022.
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“That’s when he became active,” Whitmire said, noting that neither Meadows had yet cast a vote in the state. “From our perspective, it just looks like any new South Carolina voter.”
The South Carolina registration was first reported by The Washington Post, which noted that Meadows had been a registered voter simultaneously in three states - the Carolinas and Virginia - until North Carolina removed him from its rolls earlier this month. Meadows remains a registered Virginia voter, the paper reported. An email sent by The Associated Press to the Virginia Department of Elections was not immediately returned Friday.
Mark and Debra Meadows bought a home on picturesque Lake Keowee for $1.6 million in July, according to records for the property, which was listed on their South Carolina voter registration records.
The former North Carolina congressman appeared in South Carolina earlier this week with members of the state Legislature’s newly formed Freedom Caucus, an offshoot of a similar conservative group that Meadows helped found on the federal level while serving in the U.S. House.
A representative for Meadows declined to comment Friday on the South Carolina voter registration.
Public records indicate Meadows had been registered to vote in Virginia and North Carolina, where he listed a mobile home that he never owned - and may never have visited - weeks before casting an absentee 2020 presidential election ballot in the state. Trump, for whom Meadows was serving as chief of staff in Washington at the time, won the battleground state by just over 1 percentage point.
Last month, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein’s office asked the State Bureau of Investigation to investigate.
About a year after he registered in North Carolina, Meadows registered to vote in Alexandria, Virginia, just weeks before Virginia’s high-profile governor’s election last fall, the records indicate.
Meadows frequently raised the prospect of voter fraud before the 2020 presidential election - as polls showed Trump trailing now-President Joe Biden - and in the months after Trump’s loss, to suggest Biden was not the legitimate winner.
Judges, election officials in both parties and Trump’s own attorney general have concluded there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. Experts point to isolated incidents of intentional or unintentional violations of voter laws in every election.
Whitmire, the South Carolina elections spokesman, said that when he registered with South Carolina, Meadows should have notified any other jurisdictions of his new status.
Through the Electronic Registration Information Center, a consortium through which states exchange data about voter registration, Whitmire also said officials periodically pull voter lists and remove those who have more recently registered in a new state.
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Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP.