SC’s Social Security requirement stops people from voting, federal lawsuit alleges
South Carolina is one of just four states that will not let someone vote unless they disclose their full nine-digit Social Security number on voter registration applications.
And in an era of identity theft that makes people wary of giving out their full Social Security numbers, that requirement makes South Carolina one of an “extreme minority” of states and is unconstitutional because it keeps eligible people from voting, according to a lawsuit filed by a Washington D.C. law firm in South Carolina’s federal court Monday against state election officials.
“Any application that does not include a potential voter’s full Social Security number will be rejected and the person will not be permitted to vote,” the lawsuit alleges.
The lawsuit, filed by the S.C. Democratic Party and the national Senate and House Democratic congressional committees, seeks an injunction to stop the State Election Commission from requiring full Social Security number disclosure on voter registration forms.
The lawsuit also seeks a ruling on whether South Carolina’s requirement is legal.
State Elections Commission spokesman Chris Whitmire said the agency does not “comment on pending litigation.”
But, Whitmire added, “I can tell you that state law does require the Social Security number on voter registration applications.”
The suit names as defendants Elections Commission executive director Marci Andino and chair John Wells as defendants, as well as three other members of the commission board.
The lawsuit is an effort to get more likely Democratic voters registered to vote in next year’s presidential election. Some 950,000 South Carolinians are eligible to vote but are currently unregistered, the lawsuit says, citing state Election Commission data.
Democrats argue the lawsuit’s goal is one that both parties should be able to get behind.
“We are at a fundamental part in our democracy, and it happens every election cycle with various groups, whether Republicans or Democrats, and they register people to vote,” said state Democratic Party chairman Trav Robertson. “Republicans say they love democracy and freedom and want everybody to vote. Let’s make it easier to vote. This really makes us an outlier among the other states in our country.”
Republicans didn’t agree.
“Democrats are just trying to change the rules because they know they can’t win at the ballot box,” said S.C. GOP chairman Drew McKissick. “This is just one more example of Democrats not taking elections security seriously and instead using out-of-state lawyers to waste valuable taxpayer dollars.”
Requiring potential voters to cough up their full Social Security numbers is a significant problem in South Carolina, when people conducting voter registration drives have to ask other people to put their Social Security numbers on a blank form along with other personal information, the lawsuit says.
“In an age when legitimate concerns about identity theft are widespread and growing among the American populace, those engaged in voter registration drives must convince each potential voter to provide their full Social Security number to a stranger,” the lawsuit alleges.
“Unsurprisingly, a large number of potential voters are simply unwilling to give their Social Security number to a stranger conducting a voter registration drive,” the lawsuit alleges.
South Carolina’s full Social Security disclosure requirement is “wholly unnecessary” because “nearly all of the other states (and the District of Columbia) use some other identifier besides a full Social Security number to register voters,” the lawsuit says.
Other identifiers used by other states include a driver’s license or the last four digits of a Social Security number, the lawsuit alleges.
The lawsuit cites the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, a bipartisan group established by Congress, as identifying five states — South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, New Mexico and Kentucky — that require the Social Security number to vote. However, although Kentucky requests the full Social Security number, it does not reject voter applications that don’t have the number, the lawsuit says.
The S.C. Democratic Party and Democratic congressional committees spend millions in South Carolina on voter registration drives and the full Social Security number disclosure law hampers their efforts, the lawsuit says.
Voter registration drives, which rely on “in-person interaction,” are the best way to reach South Carolina’s large pool of nearly 1 million unregistered voters, the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit also notes that if a person’s full Social Security number is compromised by identity theft, “the consequences can be catastrophic ... the immediate potential for mayhem is nearly limitless — the victims become vulnerable to the perpetrators stealing their tax refunds, collecting their benefits and income, obtaining credit and loans in their name, using their health insurance.”
Polls show Americans are increasingly aware of the dangers in sharing their full Social Security numbers and “have been increasingly unwilling to share their Social Security number with others,” the lawsuit says.
Trend toward protecting personal information
South Carolinians have been the target data breaches seeking their personal information.
In 2012, a hacker or hackers stole 3.6 million Social Security numbers and 387,000 credit or debit card numbers from the supposedly secure S.C. Department of Revenue, then-Gov. Nikki Haley disclosed.
Moreover, the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee has recently concluded that state voter registration databases are “highly vulnerable to attack,” the lawsuit says. And the U.S. House Committee on Administration ranks South Carolina as among “the top five most vulnerable states for election security,” the lawsuit says.
In 2017, state officials reported that there were “millions” of attempts to penetrate South Carolina’s voter records but not had succeeded.
In recent years, even the U.S. Census Bureau has dropped a requirement that respondents provide their Social Security numbers to data collectors, the lawsuit says.
“Our hope is that the state of South Carolina, the South Carolina Elections Commission will help us prevent any type of identity theft,” Robertson said. “We saw Donald Trump concerned about voter fraud. We saw Republicans concerned about voter fraud. Here’s an opportunity for Republicans and Democrats to come together to help eliminate the potential of identity theft.”
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in South Carolina, was filed by the Washington, D.C, law firm of Perkins Coie. One of the main lawyers in the case is Chris Bryant, who formerly worked in South Carolina.
Editor’s note: Although The State newspaper reported Tuesday that hackers had made millions of attempts to penetrate South Carolina’s voter records but had not succeeded, that does not mean “millions” of individual hackers were trying to penetrate the state’s voter network, the state Election Commission said this week.
Many of those attempted intrusions likely came from hacker software designed to produce thousands of robotic “bots” — or automated software that attempts to penetrate secure business and government networks — that roam the internet and slip into any network they come across, including voter networks, the Commission said.
Elections officials say that while some of the intrusion attempts may have been from humans with a bad intent, many other attempted penetrations likely were made by bots deployed by people including researchers and security firms with more benign motives. This article has been updated with a clarification about the attempted intrusions.
This story was originally published November 25, 2019 at 12:22 PM.
