SC absentee ballot requests ‘through the roof’

With a week to go before the June 9 primary, people voting absentee across South Carolina will likely hit an all-time high in several categories, state and county elections officials predicted Monday.

“These numbers are through the roof,” said Terry Graham, interim director of the Richland County Board of Voter Registration and Elections during an interview at his Harden Street office.

“Right now, we have more than 22,320 absentee ballot requests,” Graham said. “But in 2016 for the primary, we only had 10,283 requests in all for absentee ballots.”

Across town, at the S.C. State Election Commission, spokesman Chris Whitmire said, “One of the records we are going to set is the percentage of people participating in a statewide election by absentee.”

The previous record for percentage of people voting absentee was in the 2016 general election, when 24% of all votes cast — or more than 500,000 votes — were absentee, Whitmire said.

However, most of the absentee ballots cast in the 2016 election were cast by people voting in person at local boards and not by mail. Those votes could be tallied quickly and easily once the polls closed, Whitmire said.

So far the state election commission has issued 128,000 absentee ballots for the primary, and of those, some 67,000 people have actually voted early, Whitmire said.

“We have never issued any more than about 60,000 absentee ballots in a statewide primary before,” he said.

Usually, about 75% of the people who vote absentee vote by going by their local election board and voting early in person, Whitmire said. “But that number has totally flipped — it’s now about 81% who are requesting ballots by mail.”

“That’s a complete reversal,” Whitmire said.

Several factors account for the upwards change, he said:

▪ Before the cornonavirus hit the state, more and more people were voting absentee every election.

▪ With the pandemic, more and more people are concerned about social distancing and keeping apart from others. “Naturally, voters moved to the absentee process,” Whitmire said.

▪ The Legislature voted in early May to allow anyone to vote absentee because of the pandemic.

▪ A federal court ruling by U.S. Judge Michelle Childs suspended the requirement that anyone voting absentee have a witness sign the outside of the absentee ballot envelope.

All the additional mailed-in ballots could mean “it will take longer to count all those ballots, and in some places, the counting could go on until the next day,” he said.

The new absentee ballot law allows county officials to begin opening absentee ballot mail at 9 a.m. on the day before the primary. “All they can do is open the exterior envelope — the envelope with the ballot in it has to remain closed until 9 a.m. on election day,” Whitmire said.

“The bottom line is, it’s going to take longer on election night to count the vote. How much longer? We don’t know,” Whitmire said. “But it’s important to understand, this has no impact on the integrity or accuracy of the election.”

It’s possible, especially if a shortage of vote counters materializes, that counting mail-in ballots could take longer, Whitmire said. But if local boards have added more workers, counting could be done faster, he said.

With just a week to go before the June 9 primary, Whitmire urged anyone thinking of voting absentee not to delay, especially if voting by mail. “Mail delivery times are getting very tight, and you run a real risk there.”

An absentee ballot has to be received by the local board by hand delivery or mail by 7 p.m. on election day, when the polls closed.

Voting absentee by mail is a two-step process. Once a person gets an absentee ballot application, they have to fill it out and, most importantly, make sure they sign the application. They can either mail the signed application back, email it or drop it by the local election board.

When the election board receives the application, they will send the person an absentee ballot, which should be filled in and sent in as soon as possible.

This story was originally published June 2, 2020 at 5:00 AM.