LIVE FROM HUCK HQ: The Horry County Question—Voting With a Napkin?

Sat, January 19, 2008 - 10:02 PM

The crowd here at Huck HQ is a bit downcast, as McCain still has a four percent lead with 75 percent of precincts reporting. Huckabee was catching up for a while, but in the last twenty minutes, the lead has spread a bit for McCain.

If this thing tightens to within a few hundred votes at the end, expect to hear A LOT about voting machine problems in Horry County today. That's Myrtle Beach -- McCain country -- and his advisers are worried that voting problems there could hold him back.

State election officials say that the machine problems were not that big an issue, because voters could fill out paper ballots if the electronic ones weren't working. And if they didn't have enough paper ballots on hand?

The State newspaper quoted Election Commission spokesman Chris Whitmire saying that "voters could use almost anything - "a napkin, a paper towel" - on which they could write the name of a candidate and put it in a ballot box." Apparently this is allowable under South Carolina law. Seriously.

If I lived in South Carolina, I would vote exclusively on used beer coasters. What about you?

--Sean Mussenden