Turnout for South Carolina special election described as 'low to non-existent'


While most of the attention is on the special election in Georgia's 6th congressional district, voters in South Carolina's 5th congressional district also hit the polls on Tuesday — well, some of them.
The Post and Courier reports turnout was "generally low to non-existent" across the district. The special election will decide if Republican Ralph Norman or Democrat Archie Parnell replaces Mick Mulvaney, now serving as President Trump's budget director. In York County, elections spokeswoman Beth Covington said some precincts only saw 6 percent of registered voters, while others had a better turnout of 25 percent. "We're seeing quite a range," she added.
It wasn't going as well in Sumter County, where by the afternoon, one precinct hadn't seen a single voter, and one of the larger precincts had just 86 voters, county elections director Pat Jefferson told The Post and Courier. The district has more Republicans, but Democrats are holding out for voters dissatisfied with Trump to cast their ballots for Parnell.
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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