County elections set new record

Late Tuesday, local officials were predicting record turnout after a day’s worth of long lines and packed polling places.

20,900 voters had already cast absentee ballots, more than double the 2004 number and a record, according to county Elections Director Agnes Garvin.

Though the county had not announced its final voter totals by the midnight press time, officials said they had already counted a higher voter total in Tuesday’s contest than in any previous presidential election. And Garvin said there’s a chance a higher percent of registered voters will have cast ballots in the election than in any other contest for which statistics are kept.

“It’s a tremendous turnout, an unbelievable turnout,” said Donna Williams a volunteer at the Democratic Party headquarters on Hilton Head and an early Obama supporter.

“I was extremely pleased with the extraordinary voter turnout, which is good for democracy,” said Republican Party Chairman James Wedgeworth.

For her part, Garvin called the voter turnout “stupendous and incredibly high” and estimated that between 75 and 80 percent of registered voters would cast ballots.

If more than 78.2 percent of registered voters cast ballots, it would exceed the modern record for turnout set in 1992 when then-Ark. Gov. Bill Clinton and incumbent President George H. W. Bush faced off.

The dreary but mostly dry day started with many residents braving long lines to vote for John McCain or Barack Obama.

At Hilton Head Plantation, for example, eager voters had formed a line wrapping 1.5 times around the deck ringing Plantation House, the site of five Hilton Head Island precincts.

Long lines were the rule when polls opened at 7 a.m., only letting up by late afternoon, Garvin said the election went smoothly, though she said there were a few hiccups. At a small number of precincts in Bluffton and Lady’s Island, some residents were mistakenly not allowed to vote in local races, she said.

As of late Tuesday, it was not clear if Bluffton mayoral and Town Council candidates would challenge their contests because of the mistakes. One of the last residents to cast a ballot was Vincent Albert II, a 21-year-old Marine, who returned yesterday from an overseas tour in Iraq by way of Okinawa.

Albert’s mother, Vera, picked him up at the airport late Tuesday afternoon and rushed him to the Beaufort Elections office, just getting in the door before polls closed at 7 p.m.

“He hasn’t even eaten yet,” she said.

But even after a 23-hour flight, Albert, who had just voted in his first presidential election, looked satisfied.