ACLU claims 17,000 South Carolinians were denied the right to register to vote
Two weeks from election day, the South Carolina chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit saying that the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles unlawfully denied voter registration opportunities to thousands of eligible South Carolinians.
The extent of the problem is “unclear” but “staggering,” according to the ACLU.
In the last 13 months alone, the South Carolina DMV has denied the opportunity for voter registration to 17,564 South Carolinians who were 17 years old at the time but would have been 18 and eligible to vote by the next election, according to the national civil rights organization.
When applying for a South Carolina driver’s license, eligible voters are, by law, given the opportunity to register to vote, including those who are 17 but will be 18 by the next election.
That information is then supposed to be passed along to the South Carolina Election Commission within 10 days, according to the lawsuit. But this did not happen for thousands of eligible 17-year-olds. Of those, many indicated on their DMV forms that they wished to register to vote but were never provided with the appropriate forms, according to the ACLU.
That’s because the DMV “has a pattern and practice of screening out registrants based on age,” according to the lawsuit.
The allegations were made in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in the Richland County common pleas court by the national nonprofit and its local chapter against the state DMV and the state Election Commission.
An accompanying request for a preliminary injunction asks a judge to order the state DMV to stop screening 17-year-olds who will be eligible to vote and for the election commission to add the excluded voters to their rolls, backdated to when they should have been given an application.
“The South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles is aware of the concerns raised in the ACLU lawsuit,” said Mike Fitts, the public information officer for the South Carolina DMV. “The agency is working with the State Election Commission on possible ways to remedy the issue. Additionally, the SCDMV encourages SC residents to verify their voter registration information through the State Election Commission’s website at scvotes.gov.”
The South Carolina DMV voluntarily searched its database and found the roughly 17,000 people who had not been able to register or whose registrations were never transmitted to the election commission, according to the ACLU. It was also noted that roughly 6,000 of those people were able to register to vote by some other means.
“We appreciate SCDMV’s candor and the agency’s willingness to identify the affected voters,” said Allen Chaney, legal director of the ACLU of South Carolina. “I am hopeful that the court will order the Election Commission to add these thousands of young, first-time voters to the voter rolls so that they can cast a ballot on Election Day.”
However, in its lawsuit, the ACLU said the the state Election Commission “has refused to make any allowances for individuals impacted by the wrongful exclusion of 17-year-olds by SCDMV.”
When reached, a spokesperson for the state Election Commission said it was aware of the lawsuit but doesn’t comment on active lawsuits.