The U.S. Justice Department was wrong to block South Carolina from requiring voters to show government-issued photo identification to vote, the state’s top prosecutor argued in a lawsuit filed Tuesday.
Enforcement of the new law “will not disenfranchise any potential South Carolina voter,” Attorney General Alan Wilson argues in the suit against U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. “The changes have neither the purpose nor will they have the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race, color or membership in a language minority.”
In December, the Justice Department rejected South Carolina’s law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls, saying tens of thousands of the state’s minorities might not be able to cast ballots under the new law because they don’t have the right photo ID. It was the first such law to be refused by the federal agency in nearly 20 years.
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The department said the law, enacted last year, failed to meet the requirements of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which outlawed discriminatory practices that prevent blacks from voting.
In the lawsuit, Wilson asks a panel of three federal judges consider the case and declare the rejected portions of the law are not discriminatory. Wilson also notes South Carolina’s law is similar to one in Indiana that already has been upheld as constitutional.
Citing data from the National Conference of State Legislatures, Wilson says at least 31 states require voters to show some sort of ID at the polls, and 15 states have enacted photo ID requirements.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Justice did not immediately comment on the lawsuit. The American Civil Liberties Union said it disagreed with the lawsuit and planned to oppose it in court.
Passed by a Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by GOP Gov. Nikki Haley, South Carolina’s law also required the state to determine how many voters lack state-issued IDs so that the Election Commission can inform them of law changes. The Department of Motor Vehicles will issue free state photo identification cards to those voters.
The federal review of South Carolina’s law has sparked a dustup between state agencies over the number of residents who lack state-issued IDs. The State Election Commission has said nearly 240,000 people didn’t have an appropriate ID, but the director of Motor Vehicles said that list included more than 37,000 records that appeared to belong to dead people, plus more than 91,000 whose state license records had been dropped because they had IDs in another state.
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