A South Carolina judge has denied a request to address an apparent error made by the South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles that prevented more than a thousand eligible 17-year-olds from registering to vote before the election in November.
The American Civil Liberties Union has asked the South Carolina Election Commission to allow the registration of these voters so they can vote in the Nov. 5 general election.
Judge Daniel Coble, a Richland County General Sessions judge, issued the ruling Friday afternoon after hearing arguments in the case Friday morning.
“After careful consideration of the parties’ written motions and oral arguments, this Court finds that Plaintiff’s requested relief is overly drastic and would likely violate the separation of powers doctrine,” Coble wrote.
“As SEC Defendant (State Elections Commission) has stated, there is no effective relief that this Court could grant and even if it tried to do so, the relief sought would create disarray in the voting system.”
According to the lawsuit filed in Richland County, the state DMV failed to provide the voter registration information of 17-year-olds who would have been 18 at the time of the election and therefore eligible to vote to the South Election Commission Carolina.
The ACLU’s initial findings estimate that as many as 17,564 candidates who were 17 years old at the time but would have been eligible to register to vote could have been affected in the past 13 months. A further review by the DMV ultimately found that the number of rejected teens was much lower. It showed that around 6,000 of those affected were able to register to vote independently and had failed to pass on the information of 1,896 eligible voters who are still not registered.
A spokesperson for the DMV said this was due to an error in their system.
“This is a simple, compelling nonpartisan issue,” said Allen Cheney, legal director of ACLU South Carolina. “Due to the government’s behavior, young first-time voters are being excluded from historic elections.”
While Cheney thanked the DMV for its efforts to identify affected potential voters, he urged the courts to require state agencies to correct the error.
But their lawsuit was heavily opposed by not only the DMV and the State Election Commission, but also by representatives of the state Republican Party and several high-ranking elected officials, including Governor Henry McMaster, who filed a petition to be added as interested parties to the case added.
The court has the authority and obligation to ensure that the constitutional right to vote is protected, Cheney said.
Earlier this month, the courts ruled in favor of a lawsuit by the Democratic Party of South Carolina to extend the voter registration deadline in light of Hurricane Helene. This was an argument in favor of creating accommodations for those affected, Cheney argued.
If it was appropriate for courts to intervene when an act of God threatened to deprive South Carolina residents of their right to vote, courts should intervene when an act of government threatened to do the same, Cheney said.
What did the defendants and their supporters say?
But this effort by the national civil rights organization and its local chapter was vigorously opposed by a battery of lawyers from the DMV, the State Elections Commission, the South Carolina GOP, McMaster, Attorney General Alan Wilson, Senate President Thomas Alexander, R. – Oconee, and House Speaker Murrell Smith, R-Sumter.
Although representatives of state agencies and elected Republican leaders agreed in principle that what happened was deplorable and should not continue, they were all unanimous that the court should not intervene. In making their case, they presented a range of reasons, from procedural to practical, why Coble should not require the registration of affected voters.
“The point is that we are already more than a week away from the election and there is not enough time and the court is not fit – in fact none of us are fit – to resolve those factual disputes and reach a verdict here coming,” said Michael Burchstead, an attorney for the South Carolina Election Commission.
Changing systemic aspects of the voting system in the run-up to the election would increase the potential for errors and erode public confidence in the process, argued Grayson Lambert, who represented McMaster. But more important, Lambert argued, were the limits of the court’s power.
“No matter what you think of the merits, no matter how sympathetic you are to the plaintiffs here, the court does not have the power to grant the relief the ACLU is asking for. …Courts in this State have only the just power that the Courts of England had when our Constitution was adopted.
Other attorneys, such as Kevin Hall, who represented Alexander, argued that the ACLU’s lawsuit infringed on the General Assembly’s right to pass election laws. Furthermore, Hall said, the ACLU had no standing as an organization and had failed to provide affidavits from individuals that would prove harm had been caused.
“On its face, the request is invalid. The court is being asked to act without any evidence that the allegations were made by a plaintiff who lacks standing,” Hall said.
Will Davidson, a South Carolina DMV attorney, appeared to contradict previous statements that there had been a problem with the DMV’s process, arguing that the agency was not responsible for ensuring voters were qualified since the law only gave them the power to check whether potential voters wanted to register. Qualification was legally the responsibility of the provincial election boards.
“The Legislature does not pass laws that are senseless and have no meaning,” Davidson argued. He said DMV employees are instructed to alert customers if they were unable to register with the DMV.
Those affected should have had ample time to look up their own registration, which the majority of them did, Davidson said.
“If any of these 1,896 came in in July and haven’t received a card, they really should be on notice,” Davidson said, adding that the case should be dismissed because “There is no problem.”
