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A supporter of Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul has been warned about "improper lane use" after his hot air balloon backed up traffic for miles on a South Carolina highway.

The South Carolina Highway Patrol asked two supporters to deflate the balloon bearing Ron Paul's name, which was hovering near I-85's mile marker 52 outside of Greenville during rush hour Thursday morning. A written warning was issued because the balloon was set up in the middle of a frontage road.

"We were trying to get people to vote for Ron Paul," one of the men told WSPA-TV. "We were pleading with people to go vote for Ron Paul in the primary. We wanted to be seen."

"We didn't think it was causing too much danger," he added.

South Carolina Department of Transportation cameras showed traffic -- which reports said was backed up for four miles -- coming to a near standstill on the busy highway.

Paul recently said that the U.S. Department of Transportation only needed "one guy and a computer" to administer billions of tax dollars. It's not clear if the libertarian feels the same about transportation departments run by the states.

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Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul doesn't want to abolish the Department of Transportation, but he said on Tuesday that the agency really only needed "one guy and a computer."

During a town hall event in Spartanburg, South Carolina, the Texas congressman made the case for "user fees" for national parks and the federal highway system.

"Ideally, you can come up with all sorts of schemes about private highways and all, but that's not going to happen," Paul explained. "But we do have a user fee with our gasoline tax. Trouble is, they take that money then they spend it on something else."

"If you had a user fee for our highway, what you could do is have one person in the office. Oh, we got umpteen billions of dollars in gasoline tax and all they have to do is divide up the people in each state or, you know, the size of the state and send the money back."

He added: "And you could do that with one guy and a computer. But instead, we have a Department of Transportation, probably has tens of thousands of people, you know, playing politics with it all."

Paul has said that he wants to abolish at least five federal agencies, a list that does not include the Department of Transportation.