• Home
  • Independent Voter News
  • Quizzes
  • Election Dissection
  • Sections
  • Events
  • Directory
  • About Us
  • Glossary
  • Opinion
  • Campaign Finance
  • Redistricting
  • Civic Ed
  • Voting
  • Fact Check
  • 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
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Follow
Contributors

The ‘great replacement theory’ is nonsense

Debilyn Molineaux

Caught in a draft

Lawrence Goldstone

Congress shows signs of bipartisanship with retirement benefits bill

Mario H. Lopez

Fair representation: More Black people needed in STEM today

Jennifer Stimpson

First instincts, second thoughts

Debilyn Molineaux

It’s time to build a global pro-democracy movement

Yordanos Eyoel
Hahrie Han
latest News

Elections require more consistent federal funding, per report

Reya Kumar
9h

Podcast: A new understanding of the right

Our Staff
17h

Supreme Court continues to chip away at campaign finance laws

David Meyers
17 May

Podcast: Depolarizing America

Our Staff
17 May

Inflation will hit health of low-income Americans hardest

Robert Pearl
17 May

Voters head to the polls in five states, with GOP nominating battles dominating headlines

David Meyers
16 May
Videos

Video: Helping loved ones divided by politics

Our Staff

Video: What happened in Virginia?

Our Staff

Video: Infrastructure past, present, and future

Our Staff

Video: Beyond the headlines SCOTUS 2021 - 2022

Our Staff

Video: Should we even have a debt limit

Our Staff

Video: #ListenFirstFriday Yap Politics

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: Did economists move the Democrats to the right?

Our Staff
02 May

Podcast: The future of depolarization

Our Staff
11 February

Podcast: Sore losers are bad for democracy

Our Staff
20 January

Deconstructed Podcast from IVN

Our Staff
08 November 2021
Recommended
North Carolina primary election workers

Elections require more consistent federal funding, per report

Podcast: A new understanding of the right

Podcast: A new understanding of the right

Leveraging big ideas
Memorial for victims of Buffalo shooting

The ‘great replacement theory’ is nonsense

Media
Sen. Ted Cruz and Judge Amy Coney Barrett

Supreme Court continues to chip away at campaign finance laws

Podcast: Depolarizing America

Podcast: Depolarizing America

Leadership
medical expenses

Inflation will hit health of low-income Americans hardest

Leveraging big ideas