South Carolina has made significant progress concerning election reform. The latest Election Integrity Scorecard from The Heritage Foundation which was updated in November of 2025, ranks South Carolina pegged at 9th best in the country with a score of 81 out of 100. North Carolina scored 70 and Georgia 83. The highest scores in the
South Carolina lawmakers took a real step toward judicial reform in 2024. Governor McMaster signed S.1046 into law that July, changing how the state screens and selects most judges. It was a genuine win, years in the making. But one corner of the courthouse was left untouched: magistrate court. That was a problem, because magistrate
The State of South Carolina just made a strong statement in favor of American manufacturing. H.4709, the Buy American Iron and Steel Act, passed both chambers of the South Carolina General Assembly and has been signed by the Governor. This legislation mandates the use of iron and steel manufactured in America for public work projects funded by the state treasury. The notion behind the legislation is rather simple, but it has the
Impaired driving is a serious issue in South Carolina. South Carolina leads the nation in the number of fatalities resulting from drunk driving, with 6.92 deaths per 100,000 citizens, according to federal highway data. This tragic statistic should not be taken lightly. A viable solution may lie in bills like H.3857, S.849, and S.52, which
I recently joined Live 5 News to help moderate the runoff debate for Congressional District 1 between Mark Smith and Jenny Costa Honeycutt. The candidates tackled a number of tough issues facing South Carolina and the United States, including housing affordability, the future of Social Security, parental rights, and the rise of artificial intelligence (AI).
On Tuesday, June 16th, Palmetto Promise Senior Fellow Dr. Oran Smith served as a moderator for the first (and only!) gubernatorial runoff debate between Attorney General Alan Wilson and Lieutenant Governor Pamela Evette. Held on the campus of Coastal Carolina University, the debate allowed candidates the opportunity to comment on a wide variety of topics,
South Carolina voters went to the polls on Tuesday to select hundreds of nominees for Constitutional offices as well as their Congressional and General Assembly representatives. Every single State House of Representatives seat is on the ballot in November, and many of these seats had primary contests this week. We’ve compiled a complete list of
In recent years, there has been a plethora of stories about the great migration of Americans from high-cost-of-living states, namely California and New York, to cheaper, freer states such as Texas, Florida, and Tennessee. So, what about South Carolina? It is actually the Palmetto State that is leading the nation in in-migration. According to Tax
Under the leadership of Rep. Heather Crawford (R-Horry) and Rep. Shannon Erickson (R-Beaufort), the South Carolina House of Representatives took up a Senate version (S.831) and its own version (H.5071) of comprehensive infrastructure reform legislation on Wednesday. They chose to amend and pass the Senate version to speed up the progress to the finish line for
As Palmetto Promise has discussed regularly on this blog, there is a glaring problem with the South Carolina civil justice system that allows what we have termed “billboard lawyers” to target legitimate businesses for “nuclear” verdicts just because those businesses are successful, not necessarily because they are at fault. The most targeted businesses in the
