'Show up and talk' to get to know Spartanburg's primary election candidates

President of the League of Women Voters of Spartanburg County.

It’s that time again!

Yes, it’s election season and time for all of us to vote for representation in local, state and national offices.

This process of choosing who represents all of us is a key element of our representative democracy. However, every two years this process includes partisan primaries. These years we have a two-step process.

First, we have candidates applying to be their party’s choices to be on the ballot in November. This is our primary selection process. Candidates will identify as Democratic, Republican, Constitutional, Green and other parties that share their political beliefs. They want to represent those beliefs in the November General Election. When a candidate gets a majority of the primary votes in his or her party’s race, that candidate moves on to the second step and will represent their political party on the ballot on Nov. 5.

The South Carolina partisan primary will be on June 11, about three weeks from now. Early voting for that primary starts May 28.

In Spartanburg County, 50 candidates have filed to run for 24 representative seats, including Congressional District 4 and 5, State House of Representatives, State Senate Representatives, County Council, and County Sheriff.

Not all seats will have competition. Of the 24 seats, 19 will only have one candidate from one of the two major parties on the November ballot. These candidates are unopposed, and their names will not appear on the June Primary Ballot.

This leaves us with 31 candidates running in the June 11 Spartanburg County Primary. When you go to vote in your primary, you won’t see all 31 candidates. You will choose the party you are voting for, then receive your ballot with candidates specific to the district you live in. You can check SCVotes.gov to see your primary ballot ahead of time.

So, the question becomes, how do you decide who to vote for? What are candidates’ positions on issues that face our country, state, and local communities?

For some candidates, this will be hard to find out unless you get a mailer, see their campaign ads, visit their social media, go to their websites, or talk to them one-on-one. Perhaps because of this challenge, in the 2022 primaries, the last major partisan primary, only 17% of registered voters. statewide voted. (This included voters from both parties.).

In actual numbers, that meant that just 565,538 of the 3.3 million registered voters cast votes in the 2022 statewide primary. So, some would say that 17% of registered voters decided how the remaining 83% of registered voters would be governed. Just think about that!

So, to help Spartanburg County voters get to know the candidates running in the June 11 Primary, the League of Women Voters of Spartanburg County has partnered with the Upstate Action Alliance to hold a “Meet and Greet” with the candidates.

There will be no debates or speeches, just a good old-fashioned “show-up-and-talk” session with the candidates. This will take place on May 30 from 6:30-8 p.m. at the Cyril-Westside Public Library, 525 Oak Grove Road, Spartanburg.

We have invited ALL the candidates to attend. We hope they accept. And we hope you come to “Meet and Greet” your local candidates.

Ruth Stanton is president of the League of Women Voters of Spartanburg County,