Election Day update: Why high turnout in York County and ‘pivot county’ Chester matter
James Parrish drove by the Newport Fire Department precinct Tuesday around 7:15 a.m. The polls opened at 7 a.m. and the line of about 100 people stretched into the parking and around the building. Parked cars extended about a half mile down Hampton Ridge Road.
Parrish, 69, had a walking cane and limped. He couldn’t walk that far to the site, so he decided he’d come back an hour later, hoping the line would thin.
At 8 a.m., it had. Only a little.
Parrish, who wore a “Vietnam Veteran” hat, will have heart surgery on Thursday, but that wasn’t stopping him from voting on Election Day.
“If I can make it, I’m going to vote,” he said.
When he was 18, he couldn’t vote. The voting age was 21 in 1970, when he came back from the war at 19 because of an injury.
“I wasn’t old enough to vote or buy alcohol,” he said. “The law was different then. You had to be 21 for both of those things. I could go to Vietnam and die for my country, but I couldn’t vote.”
So, he doesn’t take his right to vote for granted.
Before 8 a.m., the Rock Hill precinct, which has a little more than 2,000 registered voters, had about 130 residents cast ballots in the 2020 election, and poll workers expected the line to get longer throughout the day.
With more than one million South Carolinians having already cast absentee ballots before Election Day, several voters participating Tuesday assumed wait times wouldn’t be bad but were prepared to wait as long as it took to vote.
At various Rock Hill and Fort Mill precincts, voters waited in line for about 45 minutes to an hour.
First-time voters, families hit polls in Rock Hill, Fort Mill
A few minutes before Parrish went in to vote, Anton Davis, 19, trickled out of the Newport Fire Department. The 2019 Northwestern High School graduate wore a Northwestern track and field hoodie with blue jeans and running shoes.
Davis, who voted in his first election on Tuesday, said he was looking forward to voting on Election Day to be part of the day’s excitement. He and his father arrived at 7:30 a.m. and were in and out of the line in 45 minutes, he said — a much shorter time than he was expecting considering the stories he heard from his mother, who endured a two-hour early voting line a few days ago.
“If I want to see change, and stuff like that,” he said through a light blue facial mask, “I need to do things like this.”
A few miles north on I-77, Fort Mill polling places also were quite busy: By 9:15 a.m., the Fort Mill School District Office precinct, which has about 1,600 registered voters, had notched 161 in-person ballots and 670 absentee ballots, poll manager Gary Boyd told The Herald.
Andrew Winfield, 35, pushed his 3-year-old son in a stroller and his wife carried their 8-month old son, keeping him warm. The Winfields voted in last year’s local slate of races, but that time, one adult could wait in the car with the kids while the other one voted, and they could take parenting shifts. This time, with a line of about 50-people long that wrapped around one corner of the building, they had to take their kids with them.
When asked why they decided to vote on Election Day, Winfield shrugged: “Why not?”
Ross Polson — another person who voted at the Fort Mill School District Office, who will turn 69 on Wednesday — told The Herald he was inspired by how many people came out to vote.
“This is probably going to be one of the highest turnouts that I could ever remember during my lifetime,” Polson said with a wide-brimmed hat with a picturesque bald eagle on it. “In fact, I know it is.”
In previous elections in the five years he’s been a Fort Mill resident, he said voting at this precinct has always been a quick “in and out” ordeal. That wasn’t the case Tuesday morning.
“This is the type of election that can go either way,” he said. “And considering all the options ... it just was an obligation as a citizen to vote for whatever candidate you choose. It’s an important election.”
Chester voter turnout could dictate election result
Absentee turnout was “really high,” through Monday in Chester County, Supervisor of Elections Karen Roach told The Herald on Tuesday afternoon. Some days, the office had 500 people come to vote early.
Roach had reported “higher than normal” early voting since the beginning of October, and she said voting on Election Day has been steady: State data show a small jump in voter registration in Chester, with 21,432 registered, from 21,124 in 2016. 40.25% of registered voters are non-white. In 2016, 39.7% of active voters were non-white.
Why is this significant? Because voter participation in Chester County will be important.
Chester is one of five South Carolina counties identified by Ballotpedia, a nonprofit that provides nonpartisan election data, as a “pivot county” that could “have a broad impact on elections at every level of government.” The other counties are: Calhoun, Barnwell, Colleton and McCormick.
Chester voted for President Barack Obama in both 2008 and 2012, but “pivoted” to President Donald Trump in 2016.
Since 1960, data gathered by Ballotpedia shows that Chester has chosen Democratic candidates in 66.67% of presidential elections and Republican candidates in 33.33% of presidential elections. The county chose 10 Democratic presidents and five Republicans. In 12 of those 15 elections, Chester matched the national result.
The U.S. Census Bureau found that in 2016, Black voter turnout declined for the first time in 20 years, while Latino and overall nonwhite voters was steady. In Chester County, 36.8% of residents are Black — compared to 13.4% nationally — and data show the county followed the national trend.
Both overall voter participation and “non-white” voter participation fell in Chester in 2016.
Catawba SC polling places have to hand out provisional ballots
Around 1:30 p.m. at the Catawba Chapel AME Zion Church, Shykira Bailey stepped down the precinct’s steps with a smile. Bailey, who’s 18 and a Greenville Tech student and voted at the precinct just a few miles from her childhood home, was among the many first-time voters in York County and across the state to vote on Tuesday. She said she plans on voting in future elections too.
“Honestly, it was — I don’t know the word,” she told The Herald through a mask. “It was real.”
She added: “It was surreal because I really have a choice, have a say.”
By 1 p.m., nearly 800 voters had cast ballots, including Bailey, at the Catawba precinct, which has about 2,700 registered voters.
The site had a minor issue pulling up voters’ addresses in the system, poll clerk Cherie Mabrey told The Herald. Of the 800 voters who came through the site Tuesday, less than 20 residents’ information was not found in the county’s voter registration system, however the residents’ information was found in South Carolina Election Commission’s site.
About 13 residents had to cast a provisional ballot as a result of the mix up, Mabrey said. The York County Election Commission will review provisional ballots Friday.
Mabrey said she thinks those voters may have registered too late to participate in the election. Residents had to register 30 days prior to Nov. 3 to vote.
She also said some people may have gone to the wrong precinct.
“It’s confusing, I know,” she said. “That would be really nice if you could vote anywhere at any precinct, but that’s not how it works.”
Voters can check the status of their provisional ballot at scvotes.gov.
An afternoon look at a prominent York precinct on Election Day
Outside the Allison Creek Presbyterian Church precinct, Bill and Susan Boyd watched their 8-year-old and 4-year-old grandsons climb up and down a yellow playground slide as their 36-year-old daughter Niki waited inside to vote.
The York precinct, which has a little less than 3,000 registered voters, had nearly 1,000 voters cast ballots by 3:30 p.m. Tuesday. Inside, the line of voters snaked around the gym several times and speckled out the door.
The line had died down a little since the before-work morning rush, but poll workers expected traffic to pick back up after 5 p.m.
“She’s been in there about 10 minutes,” Bill Boyd, who wore his grandson’s Spider-Man sunglasses on his forehead, said.
“Her husband came at about 2 p.m. and he said it took him about an hour,” Susan Boyd added.
The Boyds, who are visiting from Greenville, had already voted absentee and were willing to entertain their grandkids as long as their daughter needed so she could vote.
“At least it’s nice (and) there’s a playground for them to play on,” Susan Boyd said, smiling.
Local law enforcement: No issues reported
Officials with the York County Sheriff’s Office and Rock Hill Police Department said they’ve made plans if there are any calls for service related to possible concerns about campaigning too close to voting precincts.
As of 10 a.m., law enforcement agencies in York County had not reported any calls related to concerns.
“We have heard that there were long lines at some precincts, but no problems,” said Lt. Michael Chavis of the Rock Hill Police Department.
Trent Faris, spokesman for the sheriff’s office, said deputies have not been dispatched to any polling precincts as of 10 a.m.
No voting precinct incidents were reported to police in Fort Mill, Clover, York, Chester County, or Lancaster County, police officials said.
There were no reports of businesses boarding up in York, Chester, or Lancaster counties in anticipation of protests as have been the case in some communities in South Carolina and the country, police said.
Chester County Sheriff’s Office deputies are prepared to respond if any situation occurs, said Grant Suskin, spokesman for the sheriff’s office.
Andrew Dys and Tobie Perkins contributed to this reporting.
This story will be updated throughout the day. Check back for updates.
This story was originally published November 3, 2020 at 11:21 AM.
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