Richland County desperate for election workers to avoid repeat of long voting lines
Richland County election leaders are desperate for more people willing to work the polls in order to try to avoid a repeat of Tuesday’s long voting lines and confusion over ballots at combined voting places.
At the first meeting of the county election board since this week’s primary, when some voters waited as long as five hours in hot sun or pouring rain to cast ballots, county leaders on Thursday acknowledged a number of problems with the election and vowed to make an immediate push to recruit and train more poll workers.
“We hope the public can understand the great battle that we had to fight over the last weeks,” said Terry Graham, the county’s interim elections director. “The logistics maybe could have been handled a little differently. But at the time decisions were made, they were the best decisions at the time.”
Hundreds of regular poll workers refused to work this election because of concerns about the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. That shortage caused election officials to combine many polling locations, leading to confusion for many voters who weren’t clear on where they were assigned to vote. Some poll workers who were expected to work Tuesday simply didn’t show up.
Eloise Fomby Denson was a poll clerk for the Pine Lakes voting precincts in Lower Richland. With great frustration, she explained to election board members that two of the nine people assigned to work at her location failed to show on Tuesday. Poll workers there had just two laptops available to check in voters, which caused slow-moving lines to wrap around the building for most of the day, she said.
The poll workers could not leave until 10:15 p.m., Denson said.
“You ask why we can’t get people to work? They’re discouraged,” she said. “Why do we have a problem recruiting? Poor pay, poor working conditions and lack of equipment.”
Graham said election officials would be going through a database of about 2,000 people who have worked elections in the past, asking them if they would work the upcoming primary runoffs on June 23 and the general election in November. There will be training sessions for poll workers next Wednesday and Thursday, he said, and additional training and re-training sessions over the summer.
Tuesday’s shortage of poll workers was “not your fault,” one former election board member told the current election board and interim director Thursday.
“It’s the fault of the citizens of Richland County,” said Peter Kennedy, who served on the Richland County election board until S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster ousted the entire board last February. “This is a county operation, and if the citizens do not want to participate in it, they’re going to get what they’re getting. We need a new generation of poll workers.”
Information about becoming an election worker is available online at www.richlandcountysc.gov.
In addition to quickly recruiting and training poll workers, the county must improve its communication to voters when voting locations are moved, election board chairman Charles Austin said.
At least 50 people had to cast provisional ballots in Tuesday’s primary due to questions about their proper polling place. Provisional ballots are paper ballots that are given to voters when there are questions about their eligibility.
At Thursday’s board meeting, election commissioners voted not to accept the majority of those provisional ballots that were cast by people at incorrect locations.
Several people came to defend their provisional ballots in person, some saying they had not been notified that their polling location had changed, or that they had been redirected to an incorrect location — for instance, North Springs Elementary School instead of North Springs Community Center, two voting sites located close to one another.
Those voters said they waited in line as long as five hours and as late as 10 p.m. only to learn they were in the wrong location. They could not leave and go to the correct location — because the polls had closed hours before while they stood in line. So they cast provisional ballots and crossed their fingers.
Election board members rejected the majority of those ballots from incorrect precincts.
At least one woman left the room in tears after learning her vote would not be counted.
