Effort to redraw SC voting lines fails 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 South Carolinians had voted in person. That’s more than the total for the first day of early voting in 2024. The tally rose to 32,300 an hour later. In addition, more than 4,100 absentee ballots had been returned by mail Tuesday, according to the state Election Commission.

Recognizing that Republicans will be angry at the Senate, Cash stressed that the fastest the bill could 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 voted Friday to ignore the chamber’s rules for redistricting debates. But that motion failed twice.

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.”

Early voting continues through June 5. The legislation would have delayed party primaries for South Carolina’s seven U.S. House seats until August, while keeping other contests on schedule. When precincts closed June 9, any votes cast for congressional candidates would not have counted.

The White House-endorsed map would have put 2 million South Carolinians in a different congressional district.

There is no precedent in state history of the voting lines changing after voting started, Cash 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.”

The Orangeburg Democrat also called it the latest example of “South Carolina standing up to be South Carolina,” a state known for its rebellious nature.

“You go back anywhere back in history, we’re just generally not a state that gets pushed around by Washington,” Hutto said.

People who voted in the opening hours included at least a dozen senators. Senators wearing stickers to show they’d voted ahead of the session’s 11 a.m. start included several Republicans.

After standing in line with voters in Newberry ahead of polls opening, Sen. Ronnie Cromer of Prosperity was among the nine Republicans who switched from “yes” to “no” on Tuesday.

“People will vote when they’re angry, and I think what we’re seeing today across the state, with the record early voting turnout, is that we’ve made some people mad,” said Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, who has consistently opposed the effort over the last two weeks. “Even having this conversation has upset a lot of South Carolinians, because they think that we’re cheating.”

The Edgefield Republican hopes voter anger won’t continue into the general election. He has consistently warned his colleagues that a map aimed at flipping South Carolina’s only blue U.S. House seat could backfire and create competitive seats for Democrats.

“My hope is that we have a big Republican push to try to counter that in November or else there’s going to be some losses, especially some down-ballot losses among Republicans,” Massey said.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.