SC civil liberties group sues state DMV, Election Commission over teen voter registration; Lawsuit says that state DMV system ignored eligible 17-year-olds trying to register
COLUMBIA — A civil liberties organization is suing to add potentially thousands of young South Carolina residents to the voter roll two weeks before the election.
The state American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit Tuesday alleging that the state Department of Motor Vehicles’ system made it impossible for some 17,000 eligible teenagers to register to vote while obtaining a driver’s license or other identification. The lawsuit also names the State Election Commission.
Voter registration has been closed for a week already.
But Paul Bowers, an ACLU spokesperson, said the organization did not hear about the issue until Oct. 12, when a social media post by state Rep. Spencer Wetmore, D-Folly Beach, brought it to the group’s attention.
The 17-year-old son of a friend, Wetmore said, thought he’d registered to vote while applying for a driver’s license at the DMV.
When the family checked online, the teen — who turns 18 on Nov. 1 — wasn’t registered. So, Wetmore took to social media ahead of the voter registration deadline to warn other teens they may need to re-register too.
“We were trying to look into what had happened in this one case with this one potential voter,” Bowers told the SC Daily Gazette. “Through that process, (the legal team) found out that this problem was more widespread than we initially thought.”
State law allows teenagers who will turn 18 by Election Day to register to vote up to 13 months in advance.
Normally citizens can check a box saying “yes, I wish to register to vote” at the DMV and be added to the voter roll with almost no additional steps.
But the state DMV system was programmed to ignore requests from teens who were not already 18 when they attempted to register, even if they would turn 18 by Election Day, according to the lawsuit. The system did not necessarily notify these teenagers that their attempt to register was unsuccessful, according to the lawsuit.
Over the past week, the ACLU worked with the SCDMV to identify 17,564 people who fell into this category over the last 13 months. The ACLU then checked with the State Election Commission and found that 6,240 of these teenagers had registered successfully to vote some other way, leaving over 10,000 potentially unregistered.
“I had no idea it was going to snowball into this,” Wetmore told the SC Daily Gazette. “I just didn’t have any concept it would be so many kids.”
She’s grateful to the ACLU for taking it up, saying “it shouldn’t have come to that, but here we are.”
While the ACLU got a total count of people who could have been potentially impacted, figuring out how many teenagers actually checked the box saying they wanted to register to vote will take someone physically reviewing all the forms, Bowers said. There is no electronic database of who did and did not check the box.
“The South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles is aware of the concerns raised in the ACLU lawsuit,” wrote Mike Fitts, a DMV spokesman, in a statement to the Gazette. “The agency is working with the State Election Commission on possible ways to remedy the issue.”
Fitts also encouraged voters to verify their information through the Election Commission website.
The lawsuit, filed in Richland County, includes a request for an emergency order for the DMV to identify any 17-year-olds who checked the box to register to vote but were not processed, and add them to the voter roll.
“Through all of this, the folks at the DMV, state Election Commission have been transparent, helpful. It seems like they are earnestly trying to make this right,” Bowers said. “No doubt it’s a logistical and technical issue that is coming up here, but we’re hopeful that because the two state agencies have been cooperative and open that we’ll be able to restore rights for as many people as possible as quickly as possible.”
Although the immediate request is focused on this general election, the issue has been ongoing for at least 22 years, according to the ACLU. The state DMV is required to assist customers with registering to vote under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, a federal law.
The Election Commission does not comment on ongoing legal matters, a spokesperson said.
No court hearings had been scheduled as of Tuesday evening.
Registration for the Nov. 5 election was initially scheduled to end on Oct. 4 for in-person registration, but in the wake of Tropical Storm Helene the state Democratic Party successfully asked a court to extend the deadline to Oct. 14.
The extension was ordered by Circuit Court Judge Daniel Coble, and Bowers said Coble will also review this case from the ACLU.
According to the state Election Commission, there is a process in place for people who think they registered at the DMV but aren’t on the voter list when they show up at the polls. But it’s time-consuming for everyone involved. The intended voter could wait while a county election official calls the state Election Commission, which would call the DMV to confirm the person took the correct steps to register, but the information didn’t transfer for whatever reason. If everything checks out, the person could then vote normally.
Almost 1,900 teens tried to register to vote unsuccessfully, DMV concludes
Court will decide whether they can be added to the voter roll. State GOP says they should not.
BY: ABRAHAM KENMORE - OCTOBER 24, 2024 12:09 PM
COLUMBIA — A judge will decide whether 1,896 South Carolina teenagers who tried to register to vote while getting a driver’s license but were denied by a quirk in the state’s computers will be added to voter rolls for Election Day.
According to the state Department of Motor Vehicles, a review of its records identified the exact number of teens impacted by its system. Their information was sent Wednesday to the state Election Commission, said DMV spokesman Mike Fitts.
Whether the newly or soon-to-be 18-year-olds can actually vote in this presidential election will be up to the courts.
These teens were not yet old enough to vote when they applied for a driver’s license, but were eligible to register because they would turn 18 by the Nov. 5 election. Instead, the DMV system flagged them as ineligible for being too young, so the information was not forwarded to the State Election Commission.
That’s the issue at the center of an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Richland County. A hearing is scheduled for Friday.
The lawsuit seeks an emergency order to add any impacted teens to voter rolls.
More than 17,000 teenagers were eligible to register when applying for a license over the last 13 months. But most of them successfully registered to vote another way, Fitts said.
The state Election Commission isn’t doing anything with the information yet.
“We are waiting on the court’s decision for guidance on how to proceed,” John Michael Catalano, spokesman for the state Election Commission, told the SC Daily Gazette.
Republicans are fighting the lawsuit.
Gov. Henry McMaster, state Senate President Thomas Alexander, House Speaker Murrell Smith, and the state Republican Party have all filed motions seeking the join the case.
The motion by Alexander, R-Walhalla, says the lawsuit jeopardizes laws designed by the Legislature to guarantee fair and secure elections.
The state party describes the ACLU’s request as an effort to “add unknown persons on voter rolls without so much as a second look,” with early voting already underway.
“The SCGOP has an interest in defending the integrity of the 2024 General Election — and protecting its Republican candidates up and down the ballot — against (the ACLU’s) attempt to interfere with the election after it has already begun,” reads Thursday’s filing from the state Republican Party.
Beyond asking to join in, Smith, R-Sumter, is also asking the court to dismiss the lawsuit altogether.
The Republican Party has opposed other efforts to shorten the voter registration period ahead of an election, according to the filing.
Earlier this month, a court extended the voter registration deadline by 10 days, to Nov. 14, to give people impacted by Helene more time. The state Republican Party disagreed with the ruling, saying the extension should have applied only to counties impacted by the tropical storm, which was more than half of the state.
The state Democratic Party has not intervened in the lawsuit. But Jay Parmley, state party executive director, said Democrats support it.
“There’s no excuse, there’s absolutely no excuse for not transmitting voter registration information from the DMV to the Election Commission,” said Parmley at an event Wednesday. “This should not be an issue, period. So go ACLU.”
Early voting began Monday in South Carolina and quickly broke records for turnout. In the first three days, almost people 400,000 voted early.
Editor’s note: This article was updated Thursday afternoon to reflect that Gov. Henry McMaster and House Speaker Murrell Smith also filed motions in the case.
Abraham Kenmore is a reporter covering elections, health care and more. He joins the SC Daily Gazette from The Augusta Chronicle, where he reported on Georgia legislators, military and housing issues. SC Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
MORE -- Remember, you can't bring more than 5 ballots, plus your own, to the voting center in any one trip. More than 5, that's "ballot harvesting".
(COLUMBIA, S.C.) – South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson sent a letter to State Election Commission Director Howard Knapp this morning reminding him of state law obligations regarding election integrity.
Specifically, state law makes ballot harvesting illegal, making it “unlawful for a person to return more than five return-addressed envelopes in an election, in addition to his own.” Illegal ballot harvesting is a felony, with a possible sentence of up to five years in prison.
“In short, South Carolina law considers illegal ballot harvesting to be a serious offense, which undermines our system of free and fair elections. I know you, your team, and election offices across the State are working diligently to ensure that South Carolina will have a free, fair, and secure election on November 5. To further these efforts, I ask that you forward this letter to all 46 election offices across the State,” Attorney General Wilson wrote in the letter.
Director Knapp responded immediately, saying he would ensure all county directors receive the letter today.
The letter here.