Meg Kinnard/AP Photo
Voters line up to cast early ballots, October 28, 2020, in Greenville, South Carolina.
NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. – A record number of absentee ballots have been requested and cast ahead of the 2020 election in South Carolina, a state with limited options for pre–Election Day voting. The Palmetto State has already received more than 1.2 million completed absentee ballots. But the vast majority of those ballots have been issued and returned in person, because of lack of trust in the mail-in absentee system.
There were lines at several absentee-voting locations in Charleston over the weekend, drawing voters of all political persuasions. But the one thing they had in common was that many did not even consider voting by mail.
“I didn’t want anything to get messed up in the mail, so I have a better chance just coming to do it myself,” says Tarshea Brown, 22, a college student who drove from her school in Florence to cast her ballot early. “My concerns were [from] a post going around on Facebook of some people marking up the ballots when you put it into the machine and it doesn’t count. So I want to put it into the machine for myself that my vote gets counted.”
“I’m honestly just trying to get Trump out of the White House … I haven’t really been paying attention to the other races. I was going to Google while I was in line,” she says with a laugh. She had plenty of time to do so at the North Charleston Coliseum, where the line looped through the stadium parking lot and was taking more than an hour to advance to the actual voting machines.
The in-person option at the sports venue turned polling site was seen as the best bet before Election Day. Some voters who spoke to the Prospect over the weekend were students driving back to Charleston, where they’re registered to vote; others were older voters, hoping to beat the expected Election Day lines; and others were turning out early because they’d be working on Tuesday.
“I work on Tuesday and I was worried that the lines would be even longer than today and I didn’t want to stand in line after working for five hours,” says Lois Coletti, 49, who was sporting a Blue Lives Matter T-shirt. About two-thirds of the way through the line, Coletti had already been waiting for one hour, but she adds that she votes in every election and she’s waited longer to vote before in Charleston, the longest time being two and a half hours. She would not say who she was interested in voting for.
“Just because of all of the reports about ballots being lost, ballots being tossed in the trash, somebody set some ballots on fire, it doesn’t make me feel warm and fuzzy,” adds Coletti, referring to what she’s heard about the absentee ballot mail-in system. “I don’t know how much of it was true, but when you hear the reports it’s enough to make you concerned.”
While reports of absentee ballots being set on fire are not accurate, there are some reasons to be concerned about having your vote not count in South Carolina. The Palmetto State ranks as the seventh-hardest state to vote in, according to a recent Voter Cost Index study that weighted different voting processes, such as how easy it is to register to vote, options for early voting, whether ID is required, and how long polling places are open.
South Carolina will also maintain its restrictive checklist of requirements before mailed-in absentee ballots can count: a three-part requirement of the voter’s signature, a witness signature, and that witness’s address on the ballot before it gets counted.
In the February 29 presidential preference primary, more than 100 mail-in ballots were not counted in about half the counties in the state. And in the 2016 general election, more than 600 ballots were left out either for missing part of the checklist or arriving after Election Day. In this year’s close Senate race or the several competitive state legislature races, a couple of hundred votes could make a difference.
The state election commission and their county offices, which run the election logistics, haven’t assured voters that the mail-in option can guarantee someone’s vote will count.
For less regular voters, the idea of voting by mail also seems too foreign, in addition to the issues they were hearing or reading about.
Ronda Caison, 50, and Robert Caison, 43, a husband and wife, voted for the first time ever in 2016 and like many other voters wanted to feed their ballots into the tabulating machines for themselves. “My parents do it every year, and they don’t have an issue with it. I’d just like to come and do it myself,” he says.
They say they’ve always been registered but the 2016 primary was the first time they turned out, casting ballots for Ted Cruz, before sitting out the general. The couple didn’t want to vote for President Trump then, but “this time we can’t wait to vote for him,” he says. As a truck driver, he’ll be working on Tuesday and can’t be sure he’ll make it back home in time to vote on Election Day.
Despite the line, for both in-person and curbside voting, the staff at the Coliseum polling site tried to create a positive atmosphere. There was a live DJ, inspiring some people to dance a little bit in line, and free food and drinks were being handed out, including some Halloween candy. As the line snaked around the stadium, voters showed no sign of fatigue and were determined to have their voices heard.
