LEXINGTON, S.C. — Early voting is still underway in South Carolina.
Day one on Monday broke records.
Richland and Lexington counties saw some of the highest turnout in the Midlands.
“On the opening day of the early voting period for the 2024 general election, we smashed the single day early voting record that was set in 2022. The record in 2022 was approximately 70,000 and yesterday, we had over 125,000 so we beat the record by over 50,000 ballots,” John Michael Catalano, with the state’s election commission, said.
Catalano says the number of voters that came to the polls are the highest we’ve seen in years.
“If we're looking at the Midlands, we saw Richland had over almost 9,000 but they were there at 8,800 or so. We saw Lexington, over 6000, so those are the two biggest counties in the Midlands,” he said.
And other counties across the Midlands saw a high turn out as well.
“We saw almost 1,800 voters in Orangeburg County, over 2,500 in Sumter, almost 1,000 in Fairfield, so we saw again, a high turnout across the board,” Catalano said.
Election officials say these numbers beat the turnout in 2022 and 2020.
“There wasn't a single day in 2020 that got close to 125,000. I can confirm that record was higher than any day in 2020. The cleaner comparison is 2022, though, because the voting system and method lines up more like apples and apples not apples to oranges,” Catalano said.
Despite the large turn out, Lexington County officials say the lines are still moving quickly.
“It's been very, very busy, as you can see behind me this the lines are still going up just a little bit longer than we had hoped, but we have actually 25 different machines inside there for them to vote so it's going pretty quickly,” Lenice Shoemaker said.
Shoemaker is the director of voter registration in Lexington County, she recommends voters review their sample ballots online before heading to the polls.
Voters can do that by visiting scvotes.gov.
“You can look up your sample ballot. You can just kind of familiarize yourself with what you may be voting on, and that's really helpful. That's less time that someone would have on the ballot. Please bring your driver's license, military ID, passport, anything that that you may have to show your ID. It cannot be expired,” Shoemaker said.
Voters say this is some of the largest crowds they’ve ever seen.
“The times that I've been voting, I have never seen this many people, and everybody's just really seems to be enthusiastic about voting,” Kathy Bennett, a voter, said.
The state’s election commission reminds voters there are several places they can vote early.
“We always strongly recommend anyone who's leaving to vote check scvotes.gov first, because we have all early voting locations for every county listed there. Most counties have more than one early voting location, they can have up to seven. I know Lexington and Richland, they are both offering several options, and most counties, again, are offering more than just one place to vote,” Catalano said.
For a full list of places to vote early in South Carolina, you can visit scvotes.gov.