Clemson’s Dabo Swinney initially blocked from voting in South Carolina. Here’s why
Dabo Swinney said he arrived at his local precinct in Clemson early on Tuesday morning, ready to be a “good citizen” and vote in the 2024 election cycle.
But a poll worker error prevented the Tigers’ football coach from formally casting his ballot on Election Day, he revealed during his weekly news conference.
Swinney said he was initially told he couldn’t vote because he’d already voted — before officials realized a poll worker had accidentally marked Swinney down as voting last week when his oldest son, Will, who has the same government first name as him, cast his vote early in Clemson.
The process was resolved in roughly an hour. Amy Sams, the executive director of voter registration and elections in Pickens County, confirmed to The State that Swinney’s vote (and his oldest son’s vote) should be formally processed after a provisional ballot hearing on Friday.
Swinney said he appreciated the county’s help in resolving the error and he’s happy his vote will still count. But he remained amused by the slip-up and joked that he thought for a second it had something to do with Clemson losing at home to unranked Louisville on Saturday night.
“I’m like, ‘Dang, they voted me out of the state,’ ” Swinney said Tuesday, laughing. “We lost a game, we’re 6-2 and 5-1 and, man, they’ve done shipped me off.”
He added of his morning: “That was quite an experience.”
Sams, the executive director of voter registration and elections in Pickens County, told The State in a phone interview Tuesday that the slip-up happened because of a “poll worker error” last week when Swinney’s oldest son went to vote early.
Although he’s gone by Dabo his whole life, Clemson’s two-time national champion football coach’s full government name is William Christopher Swinney. He and his wife, Kathleen, have three sons, the oldest of whom has the exact same first name.
Dabo’s oldest son, 26, goes by Will to prevent any confusion, but their identical names confused poll workers when Will (who played at Clemson and is currently on staff as an unpaid offensive intern) voted early last week in the county.
“I was like, ‘OK, this is gonna be perfect,’ ’’ Swinney said of his Tuesday morning trip to vote at his local precinct. “I’m the only person in there and they’re like, ‘Hey Coach!’ Then they hit the thing and say, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t give you a ballot.’ … He said I’d already voted.”
“I can assure you I haven’t voted,” Swinney said.
“It says we issued you an early ballot and you voted,” the worker said.
Eventually, it clicked for poll workers and supervisors that a poll worker had failed to check the birthdays when Will Swinney (born in 1998) went to vote last week and accidentally marked him down as voting as the other William Swinney in the county (Dabo, who was born in 1969 and turns 55 later this month).
“Mr. Swinney and his son have the exact same name, workers selected the father instead of the son and the son signed in under the father’s registration,” Sams said.
Explaining Dabo’s provisional ballot
Swinney said he was anticipating it would take 10 minutes for him to vote, but he ended up spending an hour at his precinct (which Sams confirmed was in Pickens County) getting the mistake sorted out.
He shouted out Sams, who he described as a “super sweet lady,” for giving him a call and walking him through how the mistake happened and how to fix it.
“Apparently, they’re gonna fix it on Friday and me and Will, our two votes will count on Friday,” Swinney said, adding: “I don’t know if it’ll matter on Friday.”
The end result: Sams said that Swinney was able to mark a paper ballot on Tuesday, but he couldn’t place it in the scanner to be recorded.
Instead, his ballot went into a provisional ballot envelope and the county election office will hold onto it until Friday.
On Friday, Sams said, the seven-person county elections board will hold a routine hearing for provisional ballots — including Swinney’s — during which poll workers will provide a formal justification for ballots that weren’t able to be cast regularly.
Sams emphasized that provisional ballots are a frequent part of every election cycle, especially one like 2024, which has seen record turnout for a close race between Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and Republican nominee Donald Trump, who remain in a “tight race,” per national news outlets.
She said there are an “infinite number of things” that could trigger a provisional ballot process, such as when someone requests an absentee ballot by mail. They can’t physically scan that ballot, so the local election board has to process it.
The issue with the Swinneys’ names also qualified, and Sams intimated that Dabo Swinney’s provisional ballot wouldn’t have any issues getting improved since it was triggered by a human error that had a simple and clear-cut justification.
“Any provisional ballots the board does approve are scanned and added into the final vote count” for their respective county, Sams said.
Swinney offered the voting anecdote as he discussed how he wakes up every day and tries to do his best for Clemson football. Sometimes, like in the case of the Tigers’ stunning home upset loss to Louisville on Saturday, that’s still not enough.
“It was quite an experience this morning ... I was trying to do my best and be a good citizen and go vote and sometimes doing your best ain’t good enough, you know?” Swinney said. “Gotta keep going, though, and figure that out.”
Polls in South Carolina close at 7 p.m. Tuesday
This story was originally published November 5, 2024 at 1:30 PM.
