Sumter expands curbside voting for November election

The COVID-19 pandemic has shifted our daily lives toward to-go service in sometimes unlikely ways, and voting is no different.

Voters standing in line to cast their absentee ballots in person this week may have noticed people voting from their vehicles. The mobile Express Vote machines mark a significant expansion in Sumter County's ability to offer curbside voting to less-mobile citizens.

The Sumter County Voter Registration and Elections office now has 58 voting machines that can be taken curbside, one for every precinct that will be open on Nov. 3, director Pat Jefferson said. Before this election, the county had two.

Jefferson said the state paid for the machines and that the process for voting on them is the same as the ones inside precincts. Voters with a handicap sticker simply have to pull into their space, and a poll worker monitoring them will roll the machine to the vehicle.

In the first week of in-person absentee voting in Sumter County, 4,751 ballots were cast and returned across five locations in Sumter County. Because of a law passed by the South Carolina General Assembly in September in response to COVID-19, any voter can cast an absentee ballot in person or by mail. Before, voters needed one of a handful of "excuses" to vote absentee, the state's only form of early voting.

Jefferson said the office received calls Friday after voters received their ballots in the mail asking how to return them. Once you complete the ballot and get someone to sign it as a witness - a rule the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated on Oct. 5 - you can send it back in the mail or drop it off at the office, located in the back of the old Sumter County Courthouse, 141 N. Main St. A staffer will be outside to collect them.

Mail-in ballots must be requested by Oct. 24, though the state election commission is recommending absentee ballots to be mailed as soon as possible, preferably a week before Election Day.