Richland County surpasses 2016 turnout, as absentee ballot counting continues

Richland County still has “a couple more hours to go” before all ballots are counted, but it’s already surpassed its 2016 rate of turnout, elections director Alexandria Stephens said Wednesday afternoon.

More than 69% of registered voters cast ballots this election cycle, clearing the 67% turnout in 2016, according to unofficial results. Tuesday’s returns are still well off from the 2008 turnout, when then presidential candidate Barack Obama was running and 76% of registered Richland voters cast ballots in South Carolina’s highest turnout election in recent years.

From the time polls closed Tuesday until 4 a.m. that night, and starting again Wednesday morning at 7, the county counted about 45,000 mail-in ballots, 90,000 in-person absentee ballots and more than 57,000 Election Day ballots.

Richland is still counting overseas ballots and damaged or defective ballots that have to be transposed by hand in a process overseen by Democratic and Republican staffers.

Columbia attorney Chris Kenney, who works for state Sen. Dick Harpootlian’s law firm and was at the elections office on behalf of the Richland Democrat, said Wednesday morning that teams of Republican and Democrat party representatives had paired up for the hand counting process, which is “very time consuming,” with one reading out the ballot and the other doing the marking.

Once that’s done, only provisional ballots, which require a hearing before being counted, will remain.

Stephens said the surge in absentee voting had helped Richland County election workers tremendously to minimize problems at the polls and cut the time it takes to total votes.

As of 4 p.m. Wednesday, absentee votes accounted for more than 70% of all votes cast in Richland County. Absentee ballots make up about half of all votes cast statewide.

The South Carolina House District 75 race between Republican incumbent Kirkman Finlay and Democrat Rhodes Bailey is the closest race in the county with only 281 votes separating the two, according to unofficial election results.

Finlay has 8,638 votes to Bailey’s 8,357.

If the margin of victory is less than 1 percent, an automatic recount is started, Stephens said.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

This story was originally published November 4, 2020 at 9:14 AM.

Maayan Schechter

The State

Maayan Schechter (My-yahn Schek-ter) is the senior editor of The State’s politics and government team. She has covered the S.C. State House and politics for The State since 2017. She grew up in Atlanta, Ga. and graduated from the University of North Carolina-Asheville in 2013. She previously worked at the Aiken Standard and the Greenville News. She has won reporting awards in South Carolina. Support my work with a digital subscription

Zak Koeske

The State

412-334-2443

Zak Koeske is a projects reporter for The State. He previously covered state government and politics for the paper. Before joining The State, Zak covered education, government and policing issues in the Chicago area. He’s also written for publications in his native Pittsburgh and the New York/New Jersey area.