Local

Judy Arioli drove past her voting precinct four times Tuesday before deciding to park her car and get out.

Arioli votes at the main branch of the Lancaster County Library in downtown Lancaster. Each time she drove past the library, the lines were wrapped around the back of the building.

When she returned for a fifth time at 12:45 p.m., the crowd was much smaller. Despite the rain, Arioli chose to get in line and wait.

She said the election was too important to miss.

"I said I'll go ahead and do it (get in line)," Arioli said. "I always vote."

Republican Mick Mulvaney has won the state S.C. Senate District 16 race over Democratic opponent Mandy Powers Norrell.

According to unofficial results from the S.C. State Election Commission, Mulvaney won with 53.7 percent of the vote, which was 25,125 votes. Norrell trailed with 21,626 votes, or 46.22 percent of the vote. This includes votes from Lancaster and York counties.

With functional voting machines and lines that kept moving throughout the day, Lancaster County voters encountered few problems at the polls on Tuesday.

Rick Crimminger, chairman of the county election commission, said wait times in lines at polling places varied depending on the precinct.

By Tuesday afternoon, the wait time in Lancaster was about an hour, while it was averaging 90 minutes in Kershaw and Heath Springs. The longest wait, he said, was in Indian Land, where voters waited an average of three hours.

Democrat D.W. "Cotton" Cole defeated Republican incumbent Wesley Grier on Tuesday for the County Council District 3 seat.

Cole had 1,766 votes and Grier had 1,698 votes.

District 3 covers the Buford community, as well as the Camp Creek, Tradesville, Unity and Pleasant Dale communities.

Cole, a retired Lancaster fire chief, watched intently Tuesday night as the results came in on the big screen at the Lancaster County Administration Building.

At that time, he didn't know how the numbers were going to play out.