Video: Greenville County Expecting Tempered Voter Participation

If absentee votes, pre-primary voter registration and past trends are to be believed, voter participation in the GOP primary will not be anything out of the ordinary, according to Conway Belangia, elections and registration director for Greenville County. 

Some 3,000 people in Greenville County have cast absentee ballots ahead of the primary, and the county and state experienced a slight bump in registration. 

"We don't expect an extraordinary spike in participation," Belangia said. 

One person braving cool temperatures and rain in Greenville on Friday was 102-year-old Mary Lee Dayton, a Greenville resident who has voted in every single election since she was eligible.

In the early 20th century, the voting age in South Carolina was 21, meaning her first participation in her civic duty was in 1930, the same year James F. Byrnes was elected to the U.S. Senate after a runoff with fellow Democrat Coleman Livingston Blease. Just 10 years prior, women earned the right to vote in the United States.