GREENVILLE, S.C. (AP) - Jerry Gary could almost see a reason he voted from his polling station at Sterling School.
Sterling practically shares a road with Tanner’s Big Orange, the hamburger stand that opened on Pleasantburg Drive in front of a historic black neighborhood during the twilight of South Carolina’s segregation era.
One day before the primary election, a hundred people protested in the fast-food joint’s parking lot. They urged the community to no longer support the Greenville business after its owner, John Allen Zeller, posted racist comments on Facebook on June 7.
“Just to find out he feels that way about people like me is disturbing to me,” Gary said.
There are maybe just a thousand steps between Tanner’s Big Orange and the building named in honor of a prestigious, historic all-black high school. But for Gary, there was no distance between his motivation to participate in the primary on the afternoon of June 9 and the demonstration at Tanner’s on June 8, he said.
Gary’s future America is one reshaped by today’s demands for a sweeping reckoning that reverses this country’s history of racial injustice and systemic discrimination. It’s an America that doesn’t tolerate racist social media posts. It’s an America where George Floyd doesn’t die while a Minneapolis police officer kneels on his neck for almost nine minutes.
It’s an America where progress begins with a single vote. And Gary was not alone in this hope - or outrage.
“I don’t think that people who are not persons of color understand that those (Zeller’s comments) are the types of things that people of color have to endure every day,” said Veronica Franklin, a black woman who also voted at Sterling School. “We get treated differently just about everywhere we go, consciously or unconsciously… To me, voting is how I use my power.”
HOW GEORGE FLOYD, PROTESTS SHAPED SOUTH CAROLINA LOCAL ELECTIONS
Voters across the Upstate said the recent waves of civil unrest triggered by Floyd’s death on Memorial Day amplified their sense of civic duty. The video documenting his final moments ramped up the urgency to participate in the political process. Protest organizers’ pleas to vote inspired some to cast a ballot for the first time.
In that way, the primary became a referendum on waiting. On the same day of Floyd’s memorial service in Texas, a vote in South Carolina was an immediate answer to the call for action.
“Currently, with the state of the world and the Black Lives Matter protests, it’s really important to use your voice,” William Stewart, 19, said before he walked into the voting booth at Greer’s Sugar Creek Clubhouse. “I think this is an important step to bring about those changes.”
This energy transformed a local primary that is often neglected by voters and is always overshadowed by the general election months later.
Anderson’s Debbie Leverette, however, saw this election as a way to help secure a legacy for the recent protests: “We need changes. We need leaders who will listen. The racial tensions are there, and protests are important. But - and I hate to say this - but the protests are irrelevant if we do not vote. They are just talk if we do not vote.
“As an African-American woman, I know voting is one of most important things I can do to create change,” she said. “Our small people, our children, are depending on us.”
Back at Sterling School, poll clerk Kathy Martin said she saw more young people than usual. A handful turned up to vote without registering, so poll workers had to turn them away.
Among them was 19-year-old Ian Whitner. He decided to join his father at the voting booth for the first time.
“It’s my right, and I just feel like I should use it,” he said.
Whitner was able to register to vote at another location and vote there, his father, Nick Whitner, later said.
For Nick Whitner, a candidate didn’t inspire his vote. George Floyd did.
“I have experienced racial profiling firsthand as a black man,” he said. “Just because I have on certain clothing, or a certain hat, or I’m walking a certain way, or I’m driving a certain way, that doesn’t justify you pulling me over and harassing me.”
COMPLICATIONS OF CORONAVIRUS CHANGES SC ELECTION
The election day was unprecedented before Floyd’s death. The risk of spreading COVID-19 through in-person voting prompted more voters to use absentee ballots.
The number of absentee ballots issued for South Carolina’s June 9 primary - 189,000 - tripled the previous record number of ballots issued for a statewide primary, said Chris Whitmire, spokesman for the state Elections Commission.
Since March, the coronavirus has infected 15,228 and killed 568 people in South Carolina. Officials said the pandemic complicated the in-person voting process.
Half of all poll workers manning the Greenville County polls on June 9 were new because many veteran workers opted out rather than risk coming in contact with someone infected with the virus, said Conway Belangia, director of voter registration and elections in the county.
Inexperienced poll workers struggled to navigate confusing voting districts and split precincts, and some Greenville voters cast the wrong ballot. Other counties across the state reported similar issues as well as long lines and some voting machine malfunctions.
Simpsonville’s David Kinlaw said the coronavirus transformed the world in another way, too. “It gave everybody a chance to reflect,” he said.
Through his own personal reflections, Kinlaw determined he would pay more attention.
The 35-year-old voted on June 9 like he had in every election. But it was different this year. He usually votes for the candidate his grandmother supports, but this time, he did his own research. He made his own informed choices.
Before he dabbed the voting touchscreen with a cotton swab on June 9 - as directed per disease precautions - the virus and the death of George Floyd were on his mind.
But as he made his selection, something else dominated his thoughts, the same thought that dominated so many quiet, private moments in voting booths across the state on June 9.
The concern was the same that shaped so many quiet, private moments through every election in this country.
He hoped, he said, that his vote would count.
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