There will be a South Carolina Democratic presidential primary on Feb. 3 — no matter how ill-prepared the party might be.

Cancellation is not an option.

S.C. Democrats would become a national laughingstock if forced to abandon the contest.

Worse, it could spell the end of a major state political party already treading water to stay alive.

For weeks, South Carolina Democrats have said they lack the money to pay for the primary, raising doubts about the first-in-the-South primary.

The party estimated it needed $500,000 to run the primary.

South Carolina, which in recent presidential years has allocated Democratic delegates through less costly caucuses, is one of two states — the other being Utah — that require political parties to pay for their own primaries. Presidential primaries elsewhere are state-funded.

Hardly a week passes when one of the presidential campaigns doesn’t call to inquire about the status of the primary.

“What’s the word?” they ask.

People with the Howard Dean campaign have spread the word that the primary would be canceled and the state would return to a caucus system.

Former state Democratic chairman Dick Harpootlian, who led the fight to get the primary, said that’s “wishful thinking” on the part of the Dean folks.

The Democrats are relying on volunteers and paper ballots, rather than costly voting machines, to keep costs down.

The state party will have to make it on its own. The Democratic National Committee served notice it would not step in to finance the primary despite the embarrassment and humiliation a canceled contest would cause. The DNC wants to avoid the precedent of bailing out one state party, knowing that if it does, others would come calling.

The state party has repeatedly said it would not ask the DNC for help.

State Democratic officials decline to say how much has been raised.

“All I know is, we’re doing extremely well,” says Charleston attorney Waring Howe Jr., national committeeman.

He rejects talk that the party might be unable to hold the primary.

“I have never been more sure” about the primary, Howe said.

The Democrats aren’t sure they can staff all 2,000 precincts statewide. Those that can’t be opened would be merged with others.

In the 2000 Republican presidential primary, the GOP did not staff all polling places, especially those in areas with larger black populations.

The state Democratic Party sued, saying the GOP was in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act. The legal action — settled after the GOP agreed to do its best to open all polls — ended up costing the party hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees.

Republicans, sensing it’s pay-back time, could do the same to the Democrats, turning the primary on its head.

Former Gov. Jim Hodges says every Democratic official, past and present, has an obligation to help the party reach its goal of $500,000. He says he will kick in his share.

Democrats like U.S. Sen. Fritz Hollings and U.S. Reps. Jim Clyburn and John Spratt are sitting on huge campaign surpluses. They could kick in enough money to pay for the whole primary, but they’ve indicated they are not going to.

“It would be a disaster for the state Democratic Party if they were forced to cancel the primary,” said Robert Jeffrey, a Wofford College political scientist. “If the national party allows this to happen, you would know what it thinks of the South Carolina Democratic Party.”