SC’s top election official calls for COVID-19 precautions during presidential election
South Carolina’s chief elections officer is urging legislative leaders to take steps to ensure November’s general election, which includes the presidential election, is safe as coronavirus case numbers continue to climb.
State Election Commission Director Marci Andino sent a letter Friday to S.C. House Speaker Jay Lucas, R-Darlington, and Senate President Harvey Peeler, R-Cherokee, expressing concerns about how the coronavirus could cause serious issues on election day, including overwhelming local officials with absentee ballots and a shortage of poll workers.
“...(W)e respectfully ask that immediate action be taken so election officials have as much time as possible to ensure we can rise to the greatest challenge to our election system our state has ever seen,” Andino wrote.
Presidential elections by far have the highest voter turnout in South Carolina. According to Andino, non-gubernatorial statewide primaries, like the one the state saw in June, see about 18% of voter participation, while presidential elections have a turnout rate of about 71%.
As of July, South Carolina had more than 3.3 million registered voters in all, according to the State Election Commission’s website.
In June, despite lawmakers expanding by-mail absentee voting, some local officials still experienced serious issues because of the coronavirus, especially in Richland County. Ballots were missing certain races, which poll workers hand wrote on paper. Officials had to consolidate locations due to a lack of poll workers, which created long lines in the 90 degree heat.
“While there were isolated issues, the primaries were successful overall as voters were able to vote in a timely and efficient manner, and election officials were able to count those votes and report totals on election night,” Andino wrote. “However, success in June does not necessarily translate to success in November.”
If the coronavirus keeps spreading across the state at the rate it is, state and local elections officials could experience serious issues, such has trouble counting absentee ballots in a timely manner, a shortage of poll workers, increased wait times and poll place consolidation. Andino also expressed concerns about whether voters will be able to social distance at polling places.
The elections director pushed for state lawmakers to adopt a number of possible solutions, including reinstating the “state of emergency” reason for voters to cast absentee ballots, an initiative that helped during the June primary. Under state law, absentee voting is allowed only with a valid reason, and it would take legislative action to expand that to include coronavirus-related reasons.
Andino also asked lawmakers to allow voters to apply for an absentee ballot online, to remove the witness requirement on absentee ballots, allow elections officials to use drop boxes to collect absentee ballots and to allow curbside voting at designated locations instead of at every polling place.
Andino pushed lawmakers to give local elections officials more time to process mail in ballots or to push back the date that counties must certify elections results.
Andino included in her letter solutions that have been adopted by other states, including allowing early voting, transitioning to a vote-by-mail system and allowing voters with disabilities, first responders and medical personnel to use the state’s electronic ballot delivery tool that is currently in use by military and overseas residents.
Speaker Lucas had received the letter and read it, according to office spokeswoman Nicolette Walters. She did not provide additional comment on the letter by Tuesday’s publication deadline.
Andino’s letter also garnered support from the League of Women Voters, who wrote in a letter to Peeler and Lucas on Monday that they agreed with the elections chief’s recommendations.
“An unchanged election process would represent a grave and an unnecessary challenge to efforts to restore normalcy in South Carolina, risking ’super-spreader events’ that could adversely affect businesses, schools and other basic social functions,” S.C. co-presidents Holley Ulbrich and Christe McCoy wrote.
Lawmakers will return to the State House in September to finish the budget and to take up other issues, including coronavirus related legislation.
But at least one legislator said the concerns are more immediate. S.C. Rep. Brad Hutto, D-Orangeburg, said Gov. Henry McMaster should call back lawmakers sooner rather than later to address elections concerns.
“In reality, we need to do this now,” said Hutto, who advocated for expanding absentee voting in June.
Hutto agrees with Andino when it comes to making the state of emergency a reason to vote absentee. He also advocated for creating multiple sites in a county where voters can cast ballots early and allowing voters to request absentee ballots online.
“You want to make sure that everyone has access to that ballot box,” Hutto said. “In the middle of a pandemic, you have to make sure that voting is safe.”
Hutto said he does believe there will be bipartisan support for passing some elections protections when lawmakers reconvene.
“Voting is not a partisan issue,” he said.
This story was originally published July 21, 2020 at 1:01 PM with the headline "SC’s top election official calls for COVID-19 precautions during presidential election."
