Handwritten ballots issued, long lines at Richland County precincts
Tuesday is a major stepping stone on the way to Election Day in November. Several statewide primary elections are being contested.
Additionally, county, city and town offices are being contested inside the Democratic and Republican parties.
This primary is unique in that it’s the first state-wide election held since the coronavirus pandemic affected South Carolina, and election officials are putting several contingencies into place to avoid the spread of COVID-19 among voters. Some include adding sneeze guards at check-in stations, following social distancing mandates, and giving voters a cotton swab to make selections on the touchscreen.
A record number of absentee ballots are expected to be submitted for Tuesday’s primaries because of the ongoing pandemic.
“The state predicted a lower turnout because of absentee ballots,” said Mary Brack, Director of the Lexington County election commission.
Absentee ballots must be submitted by 7 p.m., when the polls close, and they will not be accepted at voting precincts. Brack said Lexington County’s board of elections has a drop box at its headquarters for the absentee ballots that were not already placed in the mail.
5 p.m.
The line outside of River Springs Church in Irmo stretched more than 60 people deep Tuesday afternoon around 5 p.m. Voters waited anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour to cast their ballots, they said.
Three Richland County precincts were combined at the church due to the countywide shortage of poll workers.
“This is a killer,” poll clerk Tom Callan said.
Callan said he had two more poll workers than he expected, for a total of eight including him. He said he had never seen crowds so large for a primary election, and the turnout wasn’t just because there were extra precincts voting at the church.
“Even if I shaved this down by a third, we’re way over where we would normally be for a primary,” Callan said. “It’s because there are a number of people who are concerned about the candidates and want to ensure that their candidate gets the nod.”
Just as surprising as the overall turnout, Callan said, was the number of people requesting curbside voting today. Around 40 curbside ballots have been cast, he said — about four times as many as usual, he estimated. Curbside voting is time-consuming for poll workers, which could contribute to longer overall wait times for voters, according to Callan.
4 p.m.
A severe shortage of poll workers at one Richland County voting site in Irmo caused voters to wait more than an hour and a half to cast ballots Tuesday afternoon.
Oak Pointe Elementary School, which normally hosts two small voting precincts, was home to five for these primaries.
Some voters missed work and doctors appointments as they stood in a line that stretched more than 70 people deep outside the school in 90-plus degree heat.
The site began with four poll workers, but two more people had been sent from the Richland County Election Commission to assist by mid-afternoon.
“It’s not the number of machines. We have plenty of machines,” poll worker Debbie Goodman said. “We just didn’t connect them all because we don’t have the manpower to get people through the line.”
Many voters were confused that the line had been split in two — and one side was much shorter than the other. Because different precincts are registered on different computers, the voters had to be split to check in based on where they are normally registered.
Some people did not realize they were waiting in the longer line when they should have stood in the shorter one.
One person bought a few cases of water bottles for people waiting outside in the heat. Some people held umbrellas for shade.
Several people expressed irritation but said they would wait as long as it took.
“There’s so much happening in the world. In order for things to change, you have to exercise your vote,” said Vanessa Lybrand.
3:30 p.m.
Long lines have been reported at one of the consolidated polling places in Richland County.
More than 50 people are waiting in line outside of the North Springs Center precinct area. People in the line that is wrapping around the building are waiting at least an hour to vote, according to reports.
2:30 p.m.
A line of more than 50 people curled inside the Kilbourne Park Church gymnasium, as that precinct that normally includes wards 24 and 25 was combined with ward 13 Tuesday.
Poll workers were asking about taking a lunch break but precinct manager Rusty DePass said he didn’t know when that could happen, but they could quickly go into an office and eat.
The time crunch for poll workers was the result of continued issues with ballots in Richland County. The response at the church was to produce handwritten ballots for the voters at the precinct.
DePass said there were problems with the ballots, and he’d been told that the state senate race was missing from ward 13 ballots and the congressional race wasn’t on Republican ballots.
He said he decided to start issuing handwritten ballots without consulting with Richland County Election Commission because “they’re so incompetent.” DePass said it’s up to the commission to take the handwritten ballots and manually count them.
Concerns began filtering in a little after noon, DePass said. He said the voting machines for ward 13 were “screwed up” because they wouldn’t let people vote in the Republican congressional race.
DePass said he found another voting machine to replace the four they had for ward 13, but the new machine had the same issue. He called in an assistant to assess the problem but they couldn’t fix it, he said.
The problem is only on the ballots for ward 13, whose voters normally go to Rosewood Elementary for elections, but were combined with wards 24 and 25 for Tuesday.
Assistant precinct clerk Britne Johnson said wards 24 and 25 normally see pretty high-turnout, so adding ward 13 made Tuesday’s primaries even busier. The Kilbourne Park precinct nearly doubled with the addition based off 2018 numbers, Richland County board of elections member Duncan Buell said.
Johnson said there is a slot in the voting machines to cast handwritten, provisional and other ballots, but she has never experienced this much volume of the handwritten ballots.
“It’s just been busy, busy, busy, busy,” Johnson said.
2 p.m.
Lynette Farnsworth made her second trip to vote at Brockman Elementary School around lunchtime after her first attempt in the morning was a bit complicated.
Farnsworth, 70, said she and her mother had requested absentee ballots from the Richland County elections office before the end of May, but they’d never received them in the mail. When Farnsworth went to vote in person, she was told she couldn’t because she had requested an absentee ballot, she said.
After going home and making some phone calls to the elections office, her situation was straightened out. At 12:30 p.m., she cast her votes at Brockman and was leaving to pick up her 88-year-old mother and bring her back to vote.
It was worth the complication, she said. Not voting was not an option.
”We always want to make sure to vote,” Farnsworth said. “If you’re not part of the process, then you take what you get. And that’s not acceptable.”
Between 700 and 800 people had voted by 12:30 p.m. at Brockman, where four precincts were combined because of a countywide shortage of poll workers.
Ida Stewart said she had not been informed that her regular polling place, Trenholm Park, was closed. Normally, she said, she would walk there to vote.
She was redirected to Brockman, where she stood in a line that stretched down the school’s hallway, marked by black X’s taped to the floor, spaced 6 feet apart.
Stewart said she always votes, but it was especially important today given “the way that the world is now.”
Lunchtime voters at Brockman were in and out the door in as little as 10 minutes. Earlier in the day, the wait had been around 30 minutes for some, poll workers said.
At Dent Middle School, another location where four precincts were combined, voting had been steady throughout the morning and early afternoon, with around 500 ballots cast by lunchtime. The turnout wasn’t quite as high as one poll worker had expected, perhaps because of the high demand for absentee voting, he said.
Another poll worker, Kathryn Emery, said she wasn’t surprised to see so many people turn up to vote in person in the midst of the pandemic.
”I think in light of what is going on in our nation, I think people have decided that their vote is more important now than it has been in the past,” she said. “And they also want to be heard. So possibly that’s a motivator.”
1:15 p.m.
Things are going smoothly at Lexington County polling sites, according to Brack.
She said there have been no reports of lines at voting precincts and there has been a steady flow of voters throughout the day. Two of the busiest times for voter turnout have passed (early morning and lunchtime), with one more window of high traffic expected after 5 p.m. when people are heading home from work.
Information on voter turnout won’t be determined until after the polls close, and because of all the absentee ballots filed. The results should start coming in around 7:30 p.m. and it’s possible all the votes from the precincts will be tabulated by about 9:30 p.m., Brack said.
June primaries typically have low voter turnout, with 13 or 14 percent of registered voters participating in Lexington County, according to Brack. That number could be smaller this year because Brack said the amount of absentee ballots already filed is between 10-15 percent greater than in an average June primary.
The average turnout for a June primary in Richland County is around 20 percent, according to board of elections member Duncan Buell.
After some earlier issues, Buell said things have been going well in Richland County, which has not had any major computer problems like it has experienced in the past.
While hoping for the day to continue to go smooth, Brack said she had one wish for the voters of Lexington County. That is to make sure where they are registered to vote before the election, and not face frustration when they turn out to the polls. This happened more than once Tuesday, and her staff has issued fail-safe ballots to allow the resident to vote.
11:15 a.m.
Early indications are voter turnout in Richland County appears to be higher than anticipated, but the number of poll workers is not what was expected by Interim Elections Director Terry Graham.
Graham said concerns over COVID-19 caused a shortage in poll workers, and he’s still trying to find replacements to help during the ongoing primaries.
Heading into Tuesday, Graham knew he would not have a full staff, but was not expecting to have so many poll workers unavailable. The lack of workers is backing up lines and slowing down progress at some voting sites, Graham said.
But some of the long lines of people waiting to vote is also a good sign. The people getting into cues are practicing good social distancing and spreading out, making the length of the lines longer than in previous elections, Graham said.
Another issue that Graham is dealing with are reports of incorrect ballots at the Horrell Hill polling place. He said he’s received some complaints that not all of the candidates and races are included in all of the ballots.
Graham said anyone who encounters this issue should immediately inform a poll worker before casting their ballot. If the ballot is completed, the only alternative for the voter is to return and fill out a provisional ballot.
The ballots in question involve the House District 80 race between Jimmy Bales and Jermaine Johnson. McEntire and Hunting Creek polling sites were both moved to Horrell Hill for the election, Buell said. He believes the root of the issue is from combining the polling places.
”This is a major problem here,” said Margaret Sumpter, the Democratic president of the precinct. People really want to vote for their House representatives, and it’s unacceptable that they can’t.”
Sumpter said she received 10 calls before 9:30 a.m., when she went to the precinct to speak to the poll manager. Even after she arrived and was told the issue would be fixed, Sumpter said she kept hearing about the same problem from voters on their way out.
One of those voters was Roni Nicole, a Hopkins resident who went to vote with her partner and her mother-in-law around 9:30 a.m. When Nicole and her mother-in-law entered Horrell Hill Elementary School, they were given different color tickets — hers was orange and her mother-in-law’s was green. Those tickets led them to different ballots, according to Nicole, who couldn’t vote on the House District 80 race, only the races for sheriff and coroner.
She said she found it strange because their yards adjoin each other, so they assumed they would receive the same ballot.
After that, Nicole’s partner — who lives at the same address as Nicole — voted and he also received a ballot with the House District 80 race on it. Buell said it’s possible that Nicole received a ballot meant from a voter in one of the other two wards, which had the unopposed House District 70 race.
Nicole spoke to poll workers who said someone from the Richland County Elections Commission was looking into the problem, but that there was nothing poll workers could do, since she couldn’t cast another ballot.
By 10:30 a.m., Sumpter said she still hadn’t seen anyone from the county elections office.
A similar issue was reported in another race at a different polling site. The House District 75 candidates were missing from some ballots at the Brockman Elementary polling place.
“We’re not off to the start I’m looking for,” Graham said.
10:30 a.m.
Even for longtime voters and poll workers, Tuesday was a day of firsts. For some, it was their first time voting on new machines, which Richland County rolled out last fall. For some, there was a new challenge of navigating unfamiliar and combined polling places, caused by a shortage of poll workers.
The ongoing pandemic “didn’t make any difference. We always vote. It’s voting day, and you go and vote,” said Susan Tokarski, who stuck an “I voted” sticker to her bare bicep as she walked out of Dreher High School, where two polling precincts have been combined. “We’re of the generation that you just go and vote, that’s all there is to it.”
She had joked with the poll workers, asking if the ballot came with a free coronavirus test.
Face masks were the norm for most voters at several Richland County precincts.
For the few voters who did not come wearing their own, a mask and gloves were provided for them at Martin Luther King Park, where several poll workers wore plastic face shields and lines of blue tape marked 6 feet of distance on the floor, should crowds swell and need spacing at any point in the day.
At all polling places, voters used long-stemmed cotton swabs to make their selections on the touch-screen voting machines.
The flow of voters was slow to steady by mid-morning at several Richland County precincts.
About 120 people had cast their votes at Bradley Elementary School in Columbia by 9:30 a.m., but poll manager Audrey McDougale expected the busiest time to come at the end of the work day.
Voters had lined up outside of Bradley, where two wards have been combined, before the polls opened, McDougale said.
There was a bit of a wait for those earliest voters, she said, but by mid-morning, voters were able to walk in and out — with a pump of hand sanitizer and an “I voted” sticker at the door — within just a few minutes.
10 a.m.
Voting in Richland County appears to be going smooth, but some issues have been reported.
Some of the voting computers were backed up earlier in the morning at one polling site, according to Richland County board of elections member Duncan Buell. The vice chairman said the issue was at the Summit Parkway polling site, but the computers are currently working.
An event log is documenting all of the issues with the computers, and it will be reviewed following the primary.
There were also reports of polling sites in Richland County being closed and voters being directed to other locations. The South Beltline and Hampton polls have been moved to Brennen School on Devereaux Road.
Another issue voters are dealing with involves the South Carolina Election Commission’s website. There have been reports of problems finding polling places and getting sample ballots.
Messages on the website said “Server Error.”
The S.C. Election Commission has provided alternative websites for the information on where to vote and sample ballots, but said “Unfortunately, our site is currently experiencing issues. We apologize for the inconvenience and are working on a solution!”
At about 10:15 a.m., the S.C. Election Commission tweeted it’s site was “back up and running.”
7 a.m.
Polls opened across South Carolina for the primary races.
The contested primaries on Tuesday include U.S. Senate and several Congressional seats; the state legislature, Richland County sheriff, Richland County coroner, Richland County Council, Lexington County sheriff, and Lexington County Council.
Aside from a few minor glitches that were fixed, Brack said everything was going good at Lexington County polling places.
“We’re open and people are voting,” Brack said.
The only issues she noted were making sure the voting sites were able to print zero tape, which signifies no votes were cast at the start of the day. That issue, and allowing one voter to get a fail safe ballot where they updated that person’s address, was quickly remedied, according to Brack.
About 20 people turned out early to vote at the Spring Valley polling site in Richland County. At another polling place on Clemson Road, early-morning lines wrapped around the building.
This is a developing story, check back for updates throughout the day.
This story was originally published June 9, 2020 at 7:34 AM.
