The state election law that sets up some SC voters for failure

With all of the public sound and fury focused on voting, redistricting and election integrity, no state leader seems to be talking about a law that uniquely and deliberately sets up some South Carolina voters for failure.

This homegrown oddity may deny a few hundred or a few thousand South Carolinians the right to vote.

That’s enough to change the outcome of some important local and state legislative elections.

And it goes to show that real election problems don’t involve elaborate conspiracies but are often staring us right in the face.

If you’re like me and believe that voting is a sacred and foundational right in America — that every vote counts and should be counted — please stay with me as I dive into the weeds here.

The problem I’m speaking of involves absentee voting by mail in runoff elections.

South Carolina almost uniquely imposes a strange burden on voters. It establishes a narrow window — just two weeks — between a primary election and a runoff election.

This puts county election officials and absentee voters on a tight deadline they may not be able to meet for ballots by mail.

The result of this procedural bottleneck, as a county election official told me, is that some voters are disenfranchised and county election officials are set up for complaints, threats, and potential lawsuits.

All of this is because of a misguided deadline that state lawmakers apparently don’t care to fix.

Other states know better.

Runoff elections in North Carolina take place 10 weeks after a primary election. In Texas, runoff elections follow the primary by four to six weeks.

In Georgia, there’s a four-week gap.

In South Carolina, primary elections this year are on June 9, and the runoff follows two weeks later on June 23.

A runoff election is highly likely particularly for this year’s tightly contested governor’s race.

Bitter experience

Here’s what must happen in the runoff election for absentee mail ballots to be counted: Following the primary election, county officials first certify the election, which may take a few days. Then they print up the ballots for absentee voters. Then they bring those ballots to the post office where they’re dispersed to wherever voters happen to be.

If all goes well, absentee voters receive those ballots a few days later and must frantically make their decisions and pop the ballots back into the mail.

For a ballot to be counted, however, it must be received at the county election office by the runoff election day. Being postmarked by election day does not qualify a ballot to be counted.

The weekends create mail delays; plus, the Juneteenth federal holiday on June 19 in the middle of that two-week period closes post offices for an additional day.

The upshot: Many election offices and voters can’t meet this two-week deadline.

Had the same voters been in North Carolina, with its 10-week gap between primary and runoff, election officials and voters would not be so rushed, and more votes would likely be counted.

I speak from bitter experience. In June 2024, my runoff ballot and my wife’s runoff ballot were never even delivered to us in another state where we were temporarily working.

I found myself being denied the right to vote for the first time in 40 years.

This was for a runoff election that was extraordinarily important for our community.

Every vote counts

In Anderson County, where I live, 459 runoff ballots were supposedly sent to voters in June 2024 but only 158 were returned by the runoff deadline, according to election officials.

That means 300 runoff ballots remain unaccounted for in Anderson County. Some voters may simply have chosen not to return their ballots, but people who go to the trouble of requesting a mail-in ballot are usually highly motivated to vote.

Three hundred votes may seem like small potatoes, but a few dozen votes can sometimes alter a local or state legislative election. And this is just one of the state’s 46 counties.

The larger issue is that this is the 21 st century and South Carolina supposedly has the technology and the smarts to make sure no vote — not one — falls through the cracks.

We’ve had more than 200 years to figure out voting.

One thing seems certain: A two-week window is too little time for an election to be certified, ballots to be printed and mailed, and ballots to be received and returned.

Why should runoff voting by mail be more difficult in South Carolina than in any other state that still has runoff elections?

South Carolina lawmakers can’t fix this problem this year, but they should address it in the future.

The state Election Commission proclaims “Every vote matters. Every vote counts.”

It’s up to state lawmakers to make that bold claim a reality.