COLUMBIA — A second top S.C. Elections Commission official has been fired amid media reports that a secret recording device was discovered in a boardroom inside of the agency’s Columbia headquarters this month.
State election commission officials confirmed former commission Deputy Executive Director Paige Salonich has been fired from her near-$142,000 job at the agency.
Her ouster comes amid a broader State Law Enforcement Division investigation into former agency head Howard Knapp, who was fired after a more than five-hour, closed-door meeting of the election commission board last week.
Salonich had worked at the commission in varying roles since her hiring in Nov. 2021. She was suspended and subsequently fired from her role as a result of an internal investigation within the agency, a spokesperson confirmed.
The move comes as towns and municipalities across the state will go to the polls in six weeks for local elections for mayor and councils.
“This personnel matter does not impact the agency’s ability to administer elections, and we remain fully focused on ensuring fair and secure elections for South Carolina voters,” John Michael Catalano, an agency spokesperson, said in a statement.
The spokesperson did not confirm the rationale for the firing, but confirmed that an internal investigation had already taken place.
Neither Knapp or Salonich responded to messages seeking comment.
Knapp, the agency’s director since 2022, was already the subject of an ongoing SLED investigation for misconduct, SLED officials previously confirmed to The Post and Courier. But the scope of the investigation has since expanded following the discovery of a hidden, voice-activated recording device placed inside Election Commission headquarters, which unnamed sources told The State newspaper was discovered in a meeting room.
FITSNews, a Columbia political blog, subsequently quoted SLED spokesperson Renee Wunderlich stating the pair were the subject of an investigation into wiretapping allegations.
Wunderlich did not respond to multiple requests by The Post and Courier seeking comment as of 3 p.m. Tuesday.
A spokesperson for Attorney General Alan Wilson’s office declined comment, stating that as a general rule, the office “can’t comment even to confirm or deny the existence of any investigation.”
Wiretapping investigations are seemingly rare in South Carolina. The most recent high-profile case came months after the conclusion of attorney Alex Murdaugh’s double murder trial in November 2023. That’s when Colleton County Information Technology Director Jeffrey Colton Hill — son of Colleton County’s former clerk of court Rebecca Hill — was hit with wiretapping charges.
State prosecutors say he allegedly accessed and recorded a phone conversation without the participants’ consent. Hill was fired from his position shortly after. The case is still pending.
Knapp’s firing also came amid an ongoing legal challenge seeking to block his agency’s release of 3.3 million South Carolinians’ voter data as part of a broader investigative push by the U.S. Department of Justice, which did not provide an explicit purpose for seeking the data.
Despite a Supreme Court ruling earlier this month allowing the Election Commission to release that data, it still had not been turned over as of last week pending a written memorandum of understanding with the DOJ ensuring voters’ privacy will be protected.