A look at Daniel Island's Presidential Election History

This year will mark the fifth time that voters in Daniel Island’s modern day community have left their mark on a Presidential election. It’s been 16 years since the island town first entered Berkeley County elections as a participating precinct.

In 2000, when there was only one polling site for all of Daniel Island and Cainhoy, 1,757 residents cast ballots at the Cainhoy Fire Station for our nation’s next Commander in Chief. Democrat Al Gore was the top vote getter on the Cainhoy Peninsula then, beating out Republican George W. Bush by a mere 194 votes.

Four years later, Bush was in the contest again – this time against Democrat John Kerry. Cainhoy voters cast the majority of their Presidential ballots for Kerry. But Daniel Islanders, voting then at what is now the UBS Building on Island Park Drive, preferred Bush, making him the precinct winner with 71 percent of the vote. Also of note in the year 2004, according to Berkeley County Elections and Voter Registration Director Adam Hammons, was Daniel Island’s whopping 86 percent voter turnout rate.

“That was one of the highest in the county based on total turnout for the year in Berkeley County,” he said.

In 2008, Daniel Island voters returned to the UBS building, with some 3,226 residents casting their Presidential ballots there as lines stretched out into the parking lot. Republican John McCain received the majority of their votes, beating relative newcomer Barack Obama – who went on to win the nationwide vote that year to become America’s first African American President. Obama did win with Cainhoy voters in 2008, scoring 687 votes to McCain’s 129.

In 2012, Daniel Island residents were split into two precincts, Daniel Island 1 and Daniel Island 2, and voted for the first time in a Presidential election at the Daniel Island School. Together, they cast 4291 votes in the election that year, the majority selecting Republican Mitt Romney over Obama. Once again, Cainhoy area voters flipped that outcome – preferring Obama over Romney, 677 votes to 188. Voter turnout that year on Daniel Island was close to 67 percent.

There are some changes in store for 2016 voters, compared to what they encountered four years ago. For starters – there are now four precincts on Daniel Island and three in the Cainhoy area. Voters in Daniel Island 1 and 2 cast their ballots at the Daniel Island Club polling location, while the Daniel Island 3 and 4 precincts report to the Daniel Island School. The Village and Yellow House precincts on the Cainhoy Peninsula vote at St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church on Clements Ferry Road, while those in the Cainhoy precinct report to Cainhoy Elementary Middle School.

Another change for this year, compared to the last Presidential election, there are now close to 20,000 new voters in Berkeley County. In 2012, the registered voter count stood at 100,289. Today, it’s 119,259. Looking just at the Daniel Island and Cainhoy communities – there is now a combined 11,012 voters in the area’s seven precincts, versus 1,157 in 2000.

“All of Berkeley County has grown,” said Hammons. “And we’ve seen a lot of growth over the last four or five years. But the difference from 2000 to 2016 is amazing on Daniel Island.”

Hammons reports that he and his staff have been diligently preparing to welcome all voters to the polls on Tuesday, November 8. They plan to spend this week organizing supplies, signs, ballots, and paperwork for all of the county’s 54 polling locations. In October, staffers readied several hundred voting machines that will be used on Election Day, said Hammons. Of the 332 total machines in Berkeley County, eight were used in absentee voting, 314 will head to the polls for use on Election Day, and another 10 will be saved as backups.

So far, it is turning out to be a busy election season for absentee voting, added Hammons, who reported that the county had received 4,176 in-person ballots and 3,261 mailed ballots as of Friday, October 28. Election Day promises to bring out thousands more voters.

“We expect the biggest turnout we’ve ever had,” he said. “Every Presidential Election, it grows. But we expect to see huge turnout numbers, and we don’t expect a certain race to drive that…Most of our positions in Berkeley County are unopposed at this time, so we don’t expect to have a lot of hotly contested races. School Board has some races, and House District 100 has a Republican and a Democrat – both new candidates. We expect to see a little bit of heat here and there, but nothing major.”

As for insinuations by one major 2016 Presidential candidate that the voting system is “rigged,” Hammons said, in his opinion, that is certainly not the case in Berkeley County.

“Every Presidential campaign it’s out there,” he added. “…When a candidate brings it to the forefront, we get a little more juice from it. But we don’t have any notions of anything that’s wrong. We spend a lot of time preparing, with extra emphasis on security…I feel comfortable with our system. I vote on this equipment and I personally am not concerned. I know my vote is going to count - and yours will, too.”

Things to remember
on Election Day

*Know your polling location
*Polls are open from 7 am to 7 pm
*Be prepared for lines
*Bring a photo ID

For more information, including acceptable forms of ID, visit http://berkeleycountysc.gov/drupal/voters.

WHO WILL BE ON YOUR BALLOT?

PRESIDENT
• Hillary Clinton/Tim Kaine (DEMOCRATIC)
• Darrell Castle/Scott Bradley (CONSTITUTION)
• Evan McMullin/Nathan Johnson (INDEPENDENCE)
• Jill Stein/Ajamu Baraka (GREEN)
• Donald J. Trump/Michael R. Pence (REPUBLICAN)
• Peter Skewes/Michael Lacy (AMERICAN)
• Gary Johnson/Bill Weld (LIBERTARIAN)

US SENATE
• Thomas Dixon (DEMOCRATIC/WORKING FAMILIES/GREEN)
• Bill Bledsoe (CONSTITUTION/LIBERTARIAN)
• Tim Scott (REPUBLICAN)*
• Rebel Michael Scarborough (AMERICAN)

US HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES – DISTRICT 1
• Dimitri Cherny (DEMOCRATIC/WORKING FAMILIES/GREEN)
• Mark Sanford (REPUBLICAN)*
• Albert Travison (AMERICAN)
• Michael Grier Jr (LIBERTARIAN)

STATE SENATE – DISTRICT 37
• Larry Grooms (REPUBLICAN)*

STATE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES – District 99
• Jim Merrill (REPUBLICAN)*

COUNTY COUNCIL – DISTRICT 2
• Josh Whitley (REPUBLICAN)*

SOLICITOR CIRCUIT 9
• Scarlett Wilson (REPUBLICAN)*

AUDITOR
• Janet Brown Jurosko (REPUBLICAN)*

COUNTY TREASURER
• Carolyn M. Umphlett (REPUBLICAN)*

*Incumbent