JOHNSONVILLE, SC (WBTW) – Some voters in Johnsonville reported problems in casting their vote Saturday morning with the electronic check-in system being used for this election.
Brad Richardson is a former Johnsonville City Council member and he says his mother and father had to write their choice for president on paper and place it in a bag because the electronic systems weren’t working.
“The problem started coming in when I started getting the phone calls that people were voting for president of the United States on notebook paper,” Richardson said.
Florence County Elections and Voter Registration Office admit that machines at Johnsonville High School were down for close to two hours.
Poll workers there say they were pretty shocked that the machines wouldn’t start up. They say even after the problem was fixed they still weren’t given an answer to the cause.
“The setup was completed and time to open them up, couldn’t do it,” mentioned one poll worker.
“It was hard to believe that our problems were happening again right here in our hometown,” said Richardson.
Richardson says a problem like what happened in Saturday’s Republican primary isn’t anything new for the small city of Johnsonville.
“I don’t know who dropped the ball whether it was the county, whether the machines messed up, but you need something in place like provisional ballots,” Richardson said.