• Home
  • Opinion
  • Quizzes
  • Redistricting
  • Sections
  • About Us
  • Voting
  • Events
  • Civic Ed
  • Campaign Finance
  • Directory
  • Election Dissection
  • Fact Check
  • Glossary
  • Independent Voter News
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. Voting>
  3. absentee voting>

South Carolina to pick up postage tab for absentee voters

Bill Theobald
July 10, 2020
South Carolina voting

Voters in West Columbia, above on primary day June, won't have to pay if they vote by mail this fall.

Sean Rayford/Getty Images

South Carolina has agreed to pay the postage on all mail-in ballots in the November election.

Wednesday's decision, which looks to cost the state between $750,000 and $1.2 million, partly settles one of the three-dozen lawsuits the Democrats are pursuing across the country to make voting for president easy no matter how bad the coronavirus pandemic this fall.

Many of the suits are similarly pressing states to provide postage-paid return envelopes along with all absentee ballots. Making voters affix their own stamps, the Democrats maintain, will unfairly suppress turnout and amounts to an unconstitutional poll tax.


But state law requires local election officials to provide return postage for mailed ballots in only 16 states — eight of them reliably blue and four of them solidly red, plus the 2020 potential battlegrounds Iowa, Arizona, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

South Carolina election officials say the postage expense will be covered by their share of the $400 million in federal election aid included in the pandemic economic rescue package enacted in March.

The rest of the Democratic suit to loosen the rules in South Carolina, filed 10 weeks ago, remains before a federal judge.

The state allows people older than 65 to vote absentee for any reason while making everyone else provide a specific excuse, which has resulted in only 5 percent of votes being cast that way in recent years. The suit alleges that amounts to illegal age discrimination.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

It also challenges the requirement for a witness signature on absentee ballots and the rule that envelopes will only be tallied if they arrive at election offices before the polls close.

President Trump is highly likely to secure the state's nine electoral votes, but enhanced turnout could boost the Democrats' chances of holding on to a competitive House seat and propelling their former state party chairman, Jaime Harrison, to upsetting Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham.

From Your Site Articles
  • Vote-by-mail limits challenged in three Southern states - The Fulcrum ›
  • Democrats sue to ease absentee voting in Pennsylvania and S.C. ›
  • South Carolina expands absentee voting for primaries - The Fulcrum ›
  • Voting lawsuit updates: Georgia, New Hampshire, Mississippi - The Fulcrum ›
  • South Carolina allowing all to vote by mail - The Fulcrum ›
Related Articles Around the Web
  • South Carolina Absentee Ballots - Vote.org ›
  • SC absentee voting surpasses 2016 presidential race levels ... ›
  • No-excuse absentee voting comes to SC as coronavirus concerns ... ›
  • Absentee Voting | SCVotes ›
absentee voting

Want to write
for The Fulcrum?

If you have something to say about ways to protect or repair our American democracy, we want to hear from you.

Submit
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Follow
Contributors

Reform in 2023: Leadership worth celebrating

Layla Zaidane

Two technology balancing acts

Dave Anderson

Reform in 2023: It’s time for the civil rights community to embrace independent voters

Jeremy Gruber

Congress’ fix to presidential votes lights the way for broader election reform

Kevin Johnson

Democrats and Republicans want the status quo, but we need to move Forward

Christine Todd Whitman

Reform in 2023: Building a beacon of hope in Boston

Henry Santana
Jerren Chang
latest News

Your Take: Religious beliefs

Our Staff
15h

Remembering the four chaplains eighty years later

Rabbi Charles Savenor
15h

Podcast: Anti-racism: The pro-human approach

Our Staff
15h

Ron DeSantis and the rise of political racism

Lawrence Goldstone
02 February

Curriculum regulations and book bans: Modern day anti-literacy laws?

Katherine Kapustka
02 February

Podcast: 2024 Senate: Democrats have a lot of defending to do

Our Staff
02 February
Videos

Video: The dignity index

Our Staff

Video: The Supreme Court and originalism

Our Staff

Video: How the baby boom changed American politics

Our Staff

Video: What the speakership election tells us about the 118th Congress webinar

Our Staff

Video: We need more bipartisan commitment to democracy: Pennsylvania governor

Our Staff

Video: Meet the citizen activists championing primary reform

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: Anti-racism: The pro-human approach

Our Staff
15h

Podcast: 2024 Senate: Democrats have a lot of defending to do

Our Staff
02 February

Podcast: Collage: The promise of Black History Month

Our Staff
01 February

Podcast: Separating news from noise

Our Staff
30 January
Recommended
Your Take: Religious beliefs

Your Take: Religious beliefs

Your Take
Remembering the four chaplains eighty years later

Remembering the four chaplains eighty years later

Civic Ed
Podcast: Anti-racism: The pro-human approach

Podcast: Anti-racism: The pro-human approach

Podcasts
Video: The dignity index

Video: The dignity index

Ron DeSantis and the rise of political racism

Ron DeSantis and the rise of political racism

Big Picture
Curriculum regulations and book bans: Modern day anti-literacy laws?

Curriculum regulations and book bans: Modern day anti-literacy laws?

Big Picture