Not everyone in SC has reliable internet. It’s affecting young … – Charleston Post Courier

BAMBERG — In this rural area about an hour south of Columbia, 27-year-old Liz Saitz has struggled to stay informed without reliable home internet access. 

Saitz lives about seven miles outside the Bamberg city limits. She admits the only reason she is paying attention to politics is because one of her hometown heroes, Nikki Haley, is running for president.

But it’s been hard to keep up. 

For most of Saitz’s life, the only broadband service was through satellite internet provider HughesNet. It provided 50 gigabytes of high speed internet for $150 a month. Those gigabytes were typically used up six days into the month. Subsequent upload and download speeds were so slow that most tests didn’t even pick them up.

That lack of service meant Saitz had to research political issues and candidates while she was at work with Palmetto Care Connections, a nonprofit that brings technology, broadband and telehealth to healthcare providers in rural and underserved areas. 

“When it’s hard to retrieve information, you’re not really encouraged to look for it,” she said. 

Service holes are hitting both sides of the aisle, where South Carolina’s young, rural voters are struggling to get political information because many of them still don’t have reliable broadband access despite the state’s efforts to expand service.

Hayden Laye, 18, graduated in May. He works as a political activist in Walhalla, a small town in rural Oconee County that falls within the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Laye is chapter development coordinator at Democrats For Life of America and co-vice president at Rainbow Pro-Life Alliance. He is passionate about issues like anti-abortion advocacy and supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia. 

Working in a small, rural town isn’t easy. Internet coverage in Walhalla can be spotty. Parts of his community “up the mountain” in unincorporated communities, like Long Creek and Mountain Rest, have missed out on internet entirely. 

“It definitely is affecting, I think, 90 percent of voter outreach, especially in rural communities,” Laye said. “Anything political happens on the internet at this point. It’s definitely affecting younger people in particular.”

In recent years, federal and state officials have poured millions of dollars into broadband expansion in South Carolina. While most of the state’s 2 million-plus households now have access to reliable internet, there are still nearly 200,000 households that do not, according to most recent estimates.

The black holes affect all age demographics, but the young especially. Since so many advocacies, candidates and special interests depend on virtual platforms and social media like TikTok and Facebook to reach voters.

Laye has always been interested in politics and knew exactly how to register to vote when he turned 18. But many of his friends were not so lucky. 

“I really don’t know if even two or three percent of them, if you ask them, would even know where to go to register to vote,” he said. (It can be done online in South Carolina at scvotes.gov).

Youth voter participation has surged to historic levels in recent elections, with a majority backing Democratic candidates. In the 2020 presidential election, South Carolina saw its youth voter turnout rate increase by 10 percentage points, with 45 percent of voters 18-29 casting ballots compared to 2016.

But as voter outreach has pivoted to digital platforms since the outbreak of COVID-19, that transition is leaving many young rural voters behind. 

Saitz recently caved and purchased Starlink, Elon Musk’s new satellite internet. Even that was a stroke of luck since Starlink doesn’t service customers who live more than nine miles outside of Bamberg city limits. The startup fee for service was $800, which Saitz paid with the help of her parents. 

“If it wasn’t for wanting to keep up with Nikki Haley, then I can’t say (before Starlink) that I would have even sought out information about the election,” Saitz said. “Not saying that I wouldn’t have voted, but it wouldn’t have been a very informed vote.” 

Lack of information and access prompts many young voters to tune out politics, Laye said. There’s also a problem with the saturation of partisanship in the state chopped up into either red or blue areas.

Oconee County ballots are typically straight Republican, which discourages younger voters who might want to see different options, Laye noted.

Jazmin Kay, president and board chair of 18byvote, a youth-led nonprofit, said there is a direct correlation between access to information and civic engagement.

“I fundamentally believe that having access to civic information should be a right, not a privilege,” Kay said. “But what we’ve seen from our work with young voters is that it’s just quite frankly not as accessible when you are a student or aren’t a young person in an urban center.” 

Federal and state officials, including Republican Gov. Henry McMaster and South Carolina Democratic U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, have championed broadband expansion in South Carolina funded heavily through President Joe Biden’s Investing in America agenda. The “Get Connected SC” campaign is the next phase of South Carolina’s broadband expansion initiative aimed at educating people about what’s available and helping them access it.

South Carolina was most recently awarded $24 million in August, which was the fourth round of federal funding which will bring high-speed internet to rural vulnerable communities in Bamberg and Orangeburg counties.

To help bridge the gap, election offices and outreach groups are focusing on reaching young rural people at schools this election year. 

In Marion County, a mostly-Black Pee Dee county 30 minutes outside Florence, Cynthia Ford is hosting voter registration drives at local high schools with her fellow Delta Sigma Theta alumnae. The women recently registered 70 students to vote at Mullins High School and are still tallying up totals from their recent visit to Dillon High School.

They plan to stop at Marion, Lake View and Latta high schools before the end of the school year to reach those seniors, too, Ford said. 

“It’s important to plant the seed now,” Ford said. “They need to know why it’s important to vote and just be a part of the process and just make it a part of their life.”

Laye and other residents in the area are working to revive the Young Democrats chapter for Anderson, Oconee and Pickens counties to help with voter engagement. One of the first activities they’re planning is an in-person voter registration drive.

“Just getting them registered can be the biggest struggle, just getting them to take that first step,” he said. “That’s definitely something that we will be working on.”