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.