COLUMBIA, S.C. — Election officials said South Carolina saw a record turnout for early voting, with over 45% of registered voters across the state having already cast their ballot.
John Michael Catalano from the state election commission said the Palmetto State's first presidential election with early voting has been a success.
“It’s historic. We’ve never seen this many ballots cast before any election day in our state’s history," Catalano said. "Overall, across the state, it was very smooth. So, we’re really pleased with the turnout from the early voting period and how it went. This is our first presidential election with this early voting rule. We didn’t really know exactly what to expect, so we just planned for an extremely high turnout, and that’s what we got."
New numbers released Sunday showed 1,471,663 people voted early in-person, while 99,154 absentee ballots were returned.
The 1,570,816 total ballots received is approximately 45.4% of South Carolina's 3,454,310 registered voters.
Catalano said we may see even more records broken on election day.
“The most ballots ever cast in an election was in 2020, the last presidential election, which we were around 2.5 million votes,” Catalano said. "So, with just a million votes on election day, we could pass that, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see that."
Officials said there are likely several contributing factors for the large turnout of early voters, including convenience.
“A big reason though, is just that we’ve had more elections with it [the current early voting rules] under our belt now," Catalano said. "As more voters have done it, as we’ve had more elections go by with it, voters have liked it. And it’s easy to see why. I mean, [voters] have options. You have two weeks to get your ballot cast, rather than cramming it all into a 12-hour window on one day. So, I think voters have really appreciated having options and the turnout is reflecting that.”