Columbia, SC (WLTX) - Wednesday was the last day to register to vote in South Carolina after the deadline was extended because of the hurricanes.
It was a busy day at the Richland County Elections office for those registering and voting.
Theodora Jones said she's been registered since 18 and considers voting a use of her voice.
“I feel like it's important for everybody to get out and vote, to make a difference, you can't complain if you're not voting,” said Jones after voting her early absentee ballot.
University of South Carolina student Alexis Johnston registered for the first time on Wednesday.
“I just think it's our duty as citizens to participate in the democracy and exercise our right to vote. if we don't register to vote and we're not voting, we don't have a right to have an opinion on the political climate,” said Johnston.
Both said they've seen more interest in this year's midterm elections than usual.
“It's been a topic of conversation among my friends, we've seen it all over Snapchat, Instagram, they had a booth at USC, on Greene Street, trying to get everyone to register to vote. I've even had professors be like make sure, on this day, you have class off for a reason that you're voting,” Johnston told WLTX.
The numbers from the state back up that observation:
- As of October 12, there are 3.1 million registered voters for this year's election.
- In 2014, the last midterms, there were 2.8 million.
- Both totals are less than the 2016 presidential election, which had more than 3.15 million registered voters
Richland County Election Director Rokey Suleman said they're already seeing a lot of activity.
“We are going to see higher numbers of absentee voting than we did in 2010 and 2014 and we think that will translate to higher numbers of voters on election day than we would normally see in a midterm election,” Suleman said on Wednesday.
Election day is November 6th, polls will be open from 7am to 7pm.