How did African Americans survive the eight box law

By 1882, the Democrats in South Carolina were firmly in power. Republican voters were mostly limited to the majority-black counties of Beaufort and Georgetown. Because the state had a large black-majority population, white Democrats had narrow margins in many counties and feared a possible resurgence of black Republican voters at the polls.The law required a separate box for ballots for each office; a voter had to insert the ballot into the corresponding box or it would not count. The ballots could not have party symbols on them. They had to be of a correct size and type of paper. Many ballots were arbitrarily rejected because they slightly deviated from the requirements. Ballots could also randomly be rejected if there were more ballots in a box than registered voters.