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S.C. Senator Brad Hutto (left) speaks to the crowd gathered for the Allendale County Democratic Party’s annual convention.
At the Allendale Democratic Convention voter engagement and political accountability were the topics of the day.
Held March 9, local Allendale voters discussed how to encourage young people and apathetic voters to vote in an election season where the community feels despair and resentment towards the political system, as previously reported by The People-Sentinel.
Local political despair
Before the South Carolina presidential primaries, The People-Sentinel spoke with local voters, who expressed bipartisan feelings of frustration. For many local Republicans, inflation-caused economic insecurity and uncertainty regarding the country’s national security has led them to identify with candidates like former president Donald Trump. These were also top issues observed among local Democrats, who felt frustration towards the lack of a wider variety of candidates to vote for besides President Joe Biden. Some local Democrats said instead of voting for Biden, they will not vote.
These emotions and frustrations were reflected in the primary results: In the Republican primary, Trump won 77.1% of Barnwell County with 1,603 votes and 71.3% of Allendale County with 238 votes. In the Democratic primary, Biden won both Barnwell and Allendale County by over 95%, however he received 510 votes in Barnwell and 360 votes in Allendale.
Representative Jim Clyburn, who is also the national co-chair of Biden’s reelection campaign, called in to the convention. After Clyburn spoke to the crowd, The People-Sentinel asked Clyburn what he would say to community members who have given up on voting.
“You tell me you’re not going to vote because ‘I don’t like either one of the presidential candidates?’” Clyburn said. “That’s foolishness, downright foolishness and that’s exactly what the other side is trying to get you to do: foolish stuff. You never stop voting.”
However, several Allendale Democrats at the convention endorsed a different method for addressing local voter despair, particularly when approaching young people, by addressing the pain that led people in the community to give up on voting.
“We lost our own identity and when you lose your own identity you lose your own mindset and how you know you need to be as a person,” said recently elected Allendale Town Council member Randy Creech. “When you lose that, what do your children have?”
At the convention, both Clyburn and State Senator Brad Hutto spoke to the crowd about local changes from the Biden administration’s policies — infrastructure, broadband, lower prescription drug prices and the reshoring of manufacturing jobs. These changes, Clyburn and Hutto believe, should excite local voters to vote Democratic up and down the ballot.
“Coming from Orangeburg today I passed bridge after bridge that’s being reconstructed,” Hutto said, referencing the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. “Know what that is? That’s Biden delivering on putting infrastructure all across this country.”
Although policies like the PACT Act for veterans and renewable energy tax credits are already visible within the community, new manufacturing jobs and rebuilding infrastructure are projects that are years in the making.
Local and national accountability
Roosevelt Goode, a local Allendale voter who attended the convention, said rebuilding trust among local voters in democracy will require accountability on all levels. Goode wants frustrated voters to see the community holding local leaders accountable.
“On a local level, everyone knows one another,” Goode said. “They went to school with you, went to church with you, you hang out at the ball games. That being said, you still gotta hold each other accountable. When you don’t do that, you get disenfranchised and say ‘well he just there for the money, why [vote]?’”
To Creech, reaching local voters who have given up on voting means holding each other accountable.
“It saddens me to see this and it saddens me that nobody don’t want to answer the elephant in the room, which is us, all of us,” Creech said. “We have to admit something: we failed. But there’s a time for change.”
On a state and national level, Goode is less sure about how the community can hold those leaders accountable. As recently reported by The People-Sentinel, political advertising funded by billionaires blanketed television and computer screens throughout the community ahead of the Democratic and Republican primaries. In addition to Trump, Biden and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, Clyburn was also included in this advertising and has had his campaigns funded by hundreds of thousands of dollars from large corporations.
“Those people who say ‘I’m not voting,’ I’m not sure how you bring them back into the fold,” Goode said. “But if we start by holding our elected officials accountable to get things moving, they may come back to the polls.”
Voter registration and turnout
Due to the Democratic Party’s large political presence in the Allendale community, the party is frequently involved in voter registration drives.
Holding voter registration drives, Hutto said, should be a priority in the upcoming election year, particularly for young people. According to the South Carolina Election Commission, there are 4,564 registered voters in Allendale County. Most of these voters are over the age of 45, despite the median age in the county being 38.
In addition to a large population of people who are not registered to vote, voter turnout has also been a local issue, according to Willa Jennings, chair of the Allendale County Democratic Party. Although Allendale has a high voter turnout rate, there are still large hundreds of registered voters in the county who do not vote.
“In one election, 600 registered voters did not vote, and that is when President Obama ran, and this is a predominantly African American district,” Jennings said. “We have a lot of registered voters who do not vote. We’ve got to find a way to get people to the polls.”
To register to vote, go to SCvotes.org or go to the Allendale County Voter Registration and Elections Office.
Elijah de Castro is a Report for America corps member who writes about rural communities like Allendale and Barnwell counties for The People-Sentinel. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep Elijah writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today.
