Today is Election Day and voters in South Carolina will be casting their ballots in local, state and national races.
While many politically engaged Americans wear clothing that represents their chosen candidates, South Carolina state law has rules about what voters can wear in and around their polling places.
Controversies over ‘garbage’
Waste has been a major theme in the latter stages of both the Harris and Trump campaigns this election cycle.
At a campaign rally at Penn State on October 26, President Donald Trump compared immigrants to trash.
“We have become a garbage can for the rest of the world,” Trump said. “They throw all their garbage in our country.”
At a Trump rally at Madison Square Garden the next day, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico, a territory of the United States, “a floating island of trash.”
In response, President Joe Biden himself had a “trash statement” during a video call with Voto Latino, a nonprofit dedicated to boosting the political involvement of young Latinos.
“They are good, decent, honorable people,” Biden said of Puerto Ricans. “The only trash I see floating around there are his supporters – his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable and un-American.”
According to the White House, Biden said “supporters” with an apostrophe, referring to Hinchcliffe, and not Trump voters in general.
“Earlier today I referred to the hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump’s supporter at his Madison Square Garden rally as nonsense — which is the only word I can think of to describe it,” Biden wrote on social media . “His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable. That’s all I wanted to say. The comments at that meeting do not reflect who we are as a nation.”
For her part, Vice President Kamala Harris told supporters on Oct. 30 that Biden had clarified his comments and that they “strongly [disagrees] with any criticism of people based on who they vote for.”
Regardless of the president’s intentions, the Trump campaign has seized on Biden’s comment. On October 30, Trump held a press conference from a garbage truck bearing his campaign slogan at Green Bay Austin Straubel International Airport in Wisconsin.
The fluorescent orange vest the former president wore in the truck wasn’t the only waste-related outfit in the family. Both of Trump’s older sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, wore trash bags and campaign hats for Halloween.
What to wear to vote
In South Carolina, campaign materials are not allowed within 500 feet of a polling place entrance. This law extends beyond campaign signs to include clothing such as hats, buttons, shirts, bracelets and more.
“Campaign material on shirts can be addressed by wearing a jacket, coat or sweater over the shirt or turning the shirt inside out,” says the South Carolina Poll Manager’s Handbook. “The material must remain out of sight in the polling station and within 150 meters of the polling station.”
In addition to campaign materials with the names of the candidates, you may be asked to remove clothing with official campaign slogans such as “Make America Great Again” or “When We Fight We Win.”
However, general political messages that do not specifically reference a candidate on the ballot are permitted.
Clothing with the word trash on it, or even a trash bag itself, would not violate South Carolina law as long as it does not include the candidate’s name or slogan.
