Director of Public Information and Outreach T.J. Lundeen sits at Capital room IV at a Marriott hotel on March 2. Lundeen has worked with his team to educate South Carolina on registration and voting so the community feels comfortable choosing a candidate. “So allowing people the opportunity to really get into the voting process, understand how it works, and you just kind of get comfortable with it, to make sure that they understand the turnout on election day or when the polls are open,” Lundeen said. Photo by Maggie Monk
While the South Carolina Election Commission has gone to great lengths to break barriers in voting, there’s still work to be done with the challenges that some new adults aged 18-19, and youth voters, aged 18-25 face.
With 9 electoral votes, South Carolina is home to citizens of all demographics. While many are accurately represented across their statistics, youth voters, ages 18-25 have a characteristically low turnout at elections.
Several barriers may stop this demographic from voting, from missing information to things like transportation. T.J. Lunden, Director of Public Information and Outreach, believes that this is due to the lack of representation of Gen-Z in politics.
“The main thing for people to understand is voting shapes the future.”
— T.J Lundeen,
Public information and outreach
“When you go and vote and you see someone who’s significantly older than you or who doesn’t share your values, that’s not someone that you would probably be energized to vote for.”
The only way to fix this lack of representation is to get more people to vote. The South Carolina Election Commission has been tasked with ensuring that as many people as possible vote.
“The main thing for people to understand is voting shapes the future,” Lundeen said, “Depending on how elections turnout, the opportunity to get those candidates that you like elected but those people in office who you think will make the change that you want to see. And the only way to do that is through voting and voter education.”
The South Carolina Election Commission has done several things since 2022 to address the logistical barriers when it comes to voting.
“We passed the new voters ballots, and it brought in early voting,” Lundeen said, “You have a two-week window before Election Day comes to go and vote. (If you have) work scheduled, travel scheduled, whatever it may be, (maybe) you’re having surgery (scheduled) before election day, and you won’t be able to go out and vote? You have that early voting period to go out and cast your ballot.” .
But many young voters don’t believe that the South Carolina Election Commision has made efforts to make the voting process easier and accessible for all people.
Although there are options, such as early voting and absentee voting the turnout although high in the Republican Presidential Primary Election, with more than 205,000 voters, was lacking participation from the youth demographic.
“I think there’s promoting registering to vote, but a lot of students aren’t voting just because getting an absentee ballot is such a pain in the butt to actually do. And there’s not like if you’re from out of state or from a different county, you can’t vote on campus unless you get an absentee ballot. So they’re promoting registering to vote, but then because of state laws, there’s not a way for so many students to vote,” Emma Connelly, University of South Carolina sophomore.
