Surprise!

By Becci Robbins

The phones have been ringing steadily in the SC Progressive Network‘s office today. We’ve been working with the national Election Protection Coalition, which is staffing a hotline to provide free legal assistance to voters with problems at the polls. As of 5:30pm, the hotline has logged 36,513 reports, 480 in South Carolina. We will provide details about the reports once we’ve had time to review them and complete follow-up phone calls. For now, suffice it to say that election workers were not prepared to handle the unprecedented turnout.

It’s not like they didn’t know Election Day was coming. The large number of new voters was no surprise, either. So it’s been frustrating to watch the process over the last couple of weeks. The Get Out The Vote work we’d intended to do was delayed because election offices were so backed up that new registrations hadn’t been entered into the database. And the long lines of people trying to vote absentee bordered on abusive, with some waiting more than four hours to cast a ballot.

When I voted yesterday, in Lexington County, the wait was over two hours. The gentleman in front of me was using a cane and, worried that he wouldn’t be able to handle standing for such a long time, I went to see if he could use the curbside machines set aside for folks with physical disabilities. I was told that the person who brought him would have to wait in line, and then the machine would be brought out. He drove himself, I told them, so what was he to do? They said he could take advantage of a wheelchair parked by the front door.

It’s hard to understand why the county was so ill-prepared to deal with the needs of such voters – especially since among the reasons people can vote absentee in South Carolina is if they are disabled or over 65. The problems in Lexington were not isolated, as I watched people drive up for curbside voting in Columbia and, when nobody came out to help them, they drove off without voting. I also watched seniors stack up by the door to the election office, where there were chairs, with nobody coming out to advise them.

Clearly, we can do better. The Network is working to make sure that we do. We plan to revisit legislation we introduced last session to make it easier to vote. (For details on those bills, click here.) And we are going to hold town hall meetings in the coming weeks so South Carolinians can tell their stories and share ideas about how to improve election process in the Palmetto State.

In the meantime, if you had a problem at the polls, please make a report to the Election Protection hotline: 1-866-OUR-VOTE. That data will be used to inform legislative and procedural remedies for future elections.

Finally, thanks to everyone who volunteered today and in the days leading up to the election. Thanks, too, to all the voters who braved long lines to vote. Let’s hope that sort of faith in democracy is contagious.

With a half-million new voters added to the rolls in South Carolina since the last presidential election, election officials are predicting record numbers turning out to vote on Nov. 4. Help cut congestion at the polls by taking advantage of South Carolina’s provision for “in-person absentee” voting.

To vote in-person absentee, you must be a registered voter and meet one of the following criteria:
• Students, their spouses and dependents residing with them
• Members of the Armed Forces, Merchant Marines, Red Cross, USO, government employees, their spouses and dependents residing with them
• For reasons of employment will not be able to vote on election day
• Physically disabled persons
• Persons on vacation
• Persons age 65 or older
• Persons admitted to the hospital as emergency patients on day of election or at least four days prior to the election
• Electors with a death or funeral in the family within 3 days before the election
• Persons attending sick or physically disabled persons
• Persons serving as jurors in a state or federal court on election day
• Certified poll watchers and poll managers

You may vote in-person absentee at your county voter registration office until 5pm on Nov. 3. For more details on voting, or to find your registration office, visit the SC Election Commission’s web site.

If you encounter problems while voting, please call the toll-free hotline for assistance: 1-866-OUR-VOTE. You will be provided free legal assistance, and your report will help provide a record to help election workers address weaknesses in the system and avoid problems in the future.

The Richland County Voter Registration office needs volunteers on Saturday, Oct. 18, to help enter registration information at its office at 2020 Hampton St. in downtown Columbia. The great work that everyone has done in Richland has left the election office swamped. We can’t start our Get Out The Vote drive until we have all the folks entered in the system.

Volunteers are needed from 9am until 5pm. Call the Missing Voter Project‘s John Dawkins at 803-467-1981 if you can help, even if it’s just for an hour or two.

At the urging of the SC Progressive Network, state legislators have requested that SC Attorney General Henry McMaster issue an opinion on the state statute regulating emergency ballots at polling places.

“After the failure of many of the voting computers in Horry County during the January Republican presidential primary, where many voters were turned away from the polls, we found that no law requires precincts to have emergency paper ballots,” said Network Director Brett Bursey. Horry County election official Lisa Bourcier reported that “80-90 percent” of the county’s more than 300 machines malfunctioned. Voters in many of the county’s 118 precincts were told to come back later, on a cold and rainy day, because emergency paper ballots ran out shortly after the polls opened and the machines failed to operate.

Rep. Tracy Edge, a McCain campaign official, reported that his mother-in-law was only the 12th person to vote in her precinct, and that she was given a blank piece of paper because they didn’t have emergency ballots. State Election Commission spokesperson Chris Whitmire was widely quoted as telling people to vote on “paper towels” if necessary.

Section (A) of 7-13-430 of the state law used to read: “There must be provided for each voting place where voting machines are used as many ballots as are equal to ten percent of the registered qualified voters at the voting place.” The statute was amended in 2000 to read: “There must be provided for each voting place where voting machines are used a number of ballots not to exceed ten percent of the registered qualified voters at the voting place.”

Sen. Phil Leventis, along with Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter and Rep. James Smith, requested that the Attorney General issue an opinion on the statute. “Our switch to electronic voting statewide in 2004 accentuates the need for a back-up system of paper ballots,” Leventis said. “The current statute has no minimum number of emergency ballots required, and does not protect our right to cast a ballot in the event of machine failure.” Leventis was opposed to the state’s purchase of the touch-screen computers that do not produce a durable, and voter-verifiable, paper ballot that can be used to verify a recount.

Beaufort County’s early voting was stymied on Oct. 6 when its computers failed to come online due to an incorrect password. The problem was detected Oct. 4 and not resolved until the afternoon of the 6th. The county blamed the State Election Commission for providing the wrong password. The SEC said Beaufort County election officials were to blame.

Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler recently called for emergency paper ballots to be used in case of long lines to vote on machines. Maryland, one of only three states (Georgia and Delaware) using paperless computer voting machines like those in South Carolina, has decided to dump the computers in 2010 and switch to an optical scan system that uses paper ballots that can be hand marked if the machines malfunction, or the electricity is off.

In Pennsylvania, voting rights advocates are pushing the Secretary of State to change his ruling that emergency ballots will not be used unless all the machines in a precinct fail, urging the paper ballots be distributed if half the machines aren’t working.

After the Horry County machine failure, State Republican Party Chair Kayton Dawson told CNN that he was confident of a “full and fair count” and noted that “there is always a back-up in case of a machine malfunction and a ballot can’t be cast.”

Leventis said, “Actually, there is no mandated back-up in case of machine failures, and that is why we have taken this matter to the Attorney General.”

“This Nov. 4 we expect to see record numbers of voters,” Bursey said. “If machines fail, as they have in the past, we shouldn’t have to rely on paper towels to insure that every vote counts.”