Official: Florence County received thousands of voter applications

By Charles Tomlinson
Lake City News & Post Editor
Published: October 8, 2008

FLORENCE — Florence County has processed about 2,300 voter registration forms and could have a backlog of 5,000 to 7,000 additional applications, said Steve Love, interim county voter registration and elections director.

Love was told verbally that the voter registration office last week had handled about 2,300 new applications and change-of-address forms.

The interim director told the commission he had a “gut feeling” when estimating the number of backlogged applications. He said several voter registration drives submitted their applications near the deadline, contributing to the number of forms yet to be processed.

Love said he’d requested but didn’t receive a report on voter registration numbers in time for Wednesday’s elections commission meeting.

A volunteer at Florence County’s voter registration office told the commission Wednesday that the county must do everything it can to ensure that all voters are on the registration books by Nov. 4.

“Things that we don’t solve now will turn up on Election Day,” said Dr. Kirk Dineley, a biology professor at Francis Marion University.

Dineley said a backlog in voter registration could cause confusion at the polls during an election that likely will generate a historic voter turnout.

Love said his office is working at a sufficient pace to process all applications by the Oct. 24 deadline, after which the S.C. State Election Commission prints the voter registration books.

Elections officials have prepared an order for paper ballots, Love said, but “at that point we have run into some problems.” He said the coding of precincts was thrown off while the state was preparing the county’s voter database, but the problem was corrected Tuesday night.

Absentee ballots for military and overseas voters are federally required to be mailed by Sept. 20, 45 days prior to the election. But if a county doesn’t have preprinted absentee ballots, it can send special write-in absentee ballots, as Florence County did, S.C. State Election Commission spokesman Chris Whitmire said.

“That’s pretty common for counties to have to do that, particularly in presidential election years,” Whitmire said. The Sept. 20 deadline is only 10 days after political parties must certify their presidential candidates, he said.

After Wednesday’s meeting, Love said elections workers would begin printing paper absentee ballots and preparing iVotronic machines for absentee voting at county voter registration headquarters.

Love also said he and several commissioners met with Florence County Administrator Richard Starks, who recommended tightening security to protect voter information at the voter registration offices and Election Central, in the former Florence County Library.

He also said the county has bought new, weatherproof “Vote Here” signs based upon a recommendation from the state election commission.

“There were not enough at some of the precincts” during primary elections, he said.