Why Were South Carolina Voters So Uninformed?

When unemployed veteran Alvin Greene won the Democratic nomination for United States Senate in South Carolina with 59 percent of the vote, despite pending criminal charges and a total lack of any apparent campaign effort, media speculation went into overdrive. Could Greene's win over Vic Rawl have been caused simply by his being placed first on the ballot? Could African-Americans have concluded from the names of the candidates that Greene was also African-American? Could uninformed voters have believed they were casting a ballot for singer Al Green? Or could the result have had a more nefarious cause, such as vote fraud?

Few people, however, are asking the most important question: Why were the voters so uninformed? In a major party primary for an office as important as United States senator, the media have a responsibility to cover the election in a way that provides enough information for voters to cast intelligent ballots. How well did South Carolina's media meet that responsibility? Numerous studies have indicated that an overwhelming majority of the public obtains its information about elections largely from television. Nevertheless, the Web sites for the ABC affiliates in Charleston and Florence, CBS in Columbia and Spartanburg, NBC in Columbia and Greenville, and Fox in Columbia and Greenville do not seem to have run a single story about the Democratic primary candidates. Only WCSC in Charleston had any coverage, and it was merely two sentences in an Associated Press roundup story about the primary. It would not have helped voters very much, stating in its entirety, "Former legislator and judge Vic Rawl of Charleston has raised $185,000 since announcing in March. Unemployed military veteran Alvin Greene of Manning has raised nothing."