More than half-million SC voters cast ballots during inaugural early voting period

More than a half-million South Carolina voters cast ballots during the state’s early voting period, according to State Election Commission data.

The two-week early voting period, which concluded Saturday, marked the first time the state has offered true early voting before a general election.

South Carolina permitted four weeks of absentee in-person voting in 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but did not enact permanent early voting until earlier this year, just ahead of the June primaries.

“Early voting has been a huge success,” said Chris Whitmire, deputy executive director of the State Election Commission, who credited the new law with making South Carolina’s voting process more efficient and convenient for both voters and elections officials.

“Spreading the total number of voters across more than two weeks lessens the stress on the process, reducing issues and helping ensure every voter has the opportunity to vote,” he said.

In total, 560,622 people voted early in the two weeks before the midterm election and, as of Monday, another 54,283 had returned absentee ballots, for a total of 614,905 votes cast ahead of Election Day.

Assuming historical voter participation trends hold — about 50% of registered South Carolina voters typically cast ballots in midterm elections — early votes are likely to account for about one-third of all votes.

That’s an increase from June, when about 18% of primary ballots were cast early.

State elections officials anticipated the surge in early voting, which they attribute to additional voter education efforts and increased accessibility. For the general election, voters had three more days to vote early, longer hours at each early voting site and, in many counties, more early voting locations than in the primaries.

After a less than auspicious start — the State Election Commission website crashed due to a spike in web traffic on the first day of early voting — the process ran smoothly and there were no significant problems reported, Whitmire said.

“We did hear about lines at some places at times, but it wasn’t widespread and didn’t become an ongoing issue,” he said.

While state elections officials don’t plan to seek any legislative tweaks to the process, Whitmire said they will encourage counties that opened fewer than seven early voting sites — the maximum number permitted under the law — to consider opening more locations in the future given the likelihood that early voting will increase in popularity.

The State Election Commission anticipates that as many as half of all votes in South Carolina could eventually be cast before Election Day, he said.

Polls open at 7 a.m. Election Day and close at 7 p.m.