Effort to redraw SC voting lines ends amid record start to early voting

COLUMBIA — A GOP push to overhaul South Carolina’s congressional map ended Tuesday, as a record-setting start to early voting prompted Republican senators to abandon their support.

The 26-18 vote to effectively kill the bill requested by the White House included 14 Republicans.

It followed one of the chamber’s most conservative members taking the podium to explain why he could no longer support the effort, 12 days after the start of a special session ordered by Gov. Henry McMaster.

“Neither my conscience nor my common sense will allow me to stop an election underway,” said Sen. Richard Cash of Anderson County.

By noon Tuesday, 26,000 people had voted. That’s more than the total for the first day of early voting in 2024. The tally rose to 32,300 an hour later, according to the state Election Commission.

Recognizing that Republicans will be angry at the Senate, Cash stressed that the fastest the bill could actually become law would be sometime Wednesday, after many more thousands of people will have voted. The only way it could have passed sooner was if at least 31 senators — a two-thirds supermajority — had approved suspending the chamber’s rules for redistricting debates. But that motion failed twice Friday.

Following the rule of law is a foundational principle for the nation, Cash said, adding “I’ll emphasize it’s also a bedrock principle of conservatism.”

There is no precedent in state history of the voting lines changing after voting started, he said, noting he’d asked staff to research the question.

Senate Minority Leader Brad Hutto called the bill’s demise “a victory for the people of South Carolina, who let it be known to everybody that their vote matters — their vote counts.

“It was the people,” Hutto told reporters after session adjourned. “When they got up this morning, normally they would have gone to work, taken their kids to daycare, maybe gone on vacation, but they didn’t today. They went out to their early voting places, and they did so in ways that we have not seen before.”

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.