COLUMBIA — South Carolinians can vote in individual beginning Monday.
Polling areas throughout the state will likely be open from 8:30 a.m. to six p.m. each day by way of Saturday, Nov. 2, with one exception. They’ll be closed Oct. 27, since state regulation bans voting on Sunday.
“There’s no want to attend till Nov. 5 to vote,” mentioned Howard Knapp, government director of the State Election Fee, in a press launch Thursday. “Discover an early voting middle in your county. Vote identical to you’d at your polling place on Election Day, and have your voice heard.”
It’s the primary common election with the president on the poll for the reason that Legislature handed a regulation in 2022 formalizing a two-week window of no-excuse-needed, in-person early voting. In 2020, legislators allowed South Carolinians to vote early with out giving a purpose for being unable to vote on Election Day. However these have been non permanent modifications amid the pandemic.
By regulation, all 46 counties will need to have not less than one early voting location. They’ll provide as many as seven areas. 5 counties provide the utmost variety of decisions: Charleston, Florence, Greenville, Horry and Richland.
Registered voters within the roughly two-thirds of counties with a couple of possibility can decide whichever is most handy. The identical guidelines apply as on Election Day. Voters will likely be requested to indicate identification.
Voters additionally nonetheless have time to vote by mail. But it surely’s a multistep course of.
Purposes for absentee ballots have to be turned in by 5 p.m. Oct. 25. Allowed causes for voting absentee embody being out of city for your entire early voting window in addition to Election Day, serving within the navy, being 65 or older or having a bodily incapacity.
As soon as crammed out, absentee ballots will be returned by mail or in individual to an early voting middle or to the voter’s county election workplace by 7 p.m. Nov. 5.
Voters this 12 months can solid a poll within the race for president, within the seven congressional seats throughout South Carolina, all 170 Statehouse seats and on a proposed modification to the state structure, in addition to plenty of native races.
The South Carolina Every day Gazette has a voter information to many of those races, together with solutions to different questions voters may need.
Simply over 3.4 million South Carolinians are registered to vote heading into the election.
Following the devastation of Helene, the state Democratic Get together efficiently sued for an extension to the registration deadline, which gave individuals till Oct. 14 to get signed up.
Throughout the 10-day extension, 26,290 residents registered to vote, and 11,486 individuals up to date their voter registration, in response to John Michael Catalano, spokesman for the state election company.
To seek out the early voting areas in your county, go to the state Election Fee web site and click on in your county.