A South Carolina judge has denied a motion to address an apparent error made by the South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles that prevented over a thousand eligible 17-year-olds from being able to register to vote before November’s election.
The American Civil Liberties Union asked the South Carolina Elections Commission to permit the registration of these voters so that they could vote in the general election on Nov. 5.
Judge Daniel Coble, a Richland County General Sessions judge, issued his 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 the relief sought by Plaintiff is too drastic and would likely violate the separation of powers doctrine,” Coble wrote.
“As SEC Defendant (State Elections Commission) stated, there is no effectual relief that this Court could grant and even if it attempted to, the relief sought would create disorder in the voting system.”
According to the lawsuit filed in Richland County, the state DMV failed to transmit voter registration information of 17-year-olds who would have been 18 by the time of the election, and were therefore eligible to vote, to the South Carolina Elections Commission.
Initial findings by the ACLU estimated that as many as 17,564 applicants who were 17 years old at the time but would have been eligible to register to vote could have been impacted within the last 13 months. A further review by the DMV ultimately determined the number of rejected teens was much lower. It found that roughly 6,000 of those impacted were able to register to vote on their own and that they had failed to transmit the information of 1,896 eligible voters who remain unregistered.
A spokesperson for the DMV said that this was due to an error in their system.
“This is a simple, compelling nonpartisan issue,” said ACLU South Carolina’s legal director Allen Cheney. “Because of the government’s conduct, young first time voters are excluded from a historic election.”
While Cheney thanked the DMV for their efforts to identify the affected potential voters, he urged the courts to require the government agencies to correct the error.
But their lawsuit was heavily opposed by not only the DMV and the state Elections Commission, but representatives of the state Republican Party and several senior elected officials, including Gov. Henry McMaster, who petitioned to be added as interested parties to the case.
The court has the authority and is required 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 South Carolina Democratic Party to extend the voter registration deadline in light of Hurricane Helene. This was an argument in favor of making an accommodation for those impacted, Cheney argued.
If it was appropriate for courts to intervene when an act of God threatened to deprive South Carolinians of their right to vote, courts must 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 attorneys for the DMV, the State Elections Commission, the South Carolina GOP, McMaster, Attorney General Alan Wilson, President of the Senate Thomas Alexander, R-Oconee, and House Speaker Murrell Smith, R-Sumter.
While the representatives of state agencies and elected Republican leadership agreed, in principle, that what had happened was regrettable and should not continue, all unanimously argued that the court should not intervene. In arguing their case, they presented a range of reasons, from the procedural to the practical, as to why Coble should not require the registration of the impacted voters.
“The point is that we’re over a week before the election and there is not a enough time and the court is not suited — really none of us are suited — to fix those factual disputes and come to an adjudication right here,” said Michael Burchstead, an attorney for the South Carolina Elections Commission.
Changing systemic aspects of the voting system in the lead-up to the election would increase the likelihood of mistakes and erode the public’s trust in the process, argued Grayson Lambert, who represented McMaster. But more significantly, Lambert argued, was the limits of the court’s power.
“No matter what you think of the merits, no matter how sympathetic you might be to the plaintiffs here, the court lacks the power to grant the relief that the ACLU seeks. … Courts in this state have only the equitable power the courts in 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, as an organization the ACLU lacked standing and had failed to provide affidavits from individuals that would prove that harm had been caused.
“On its face the request is invalid. The court is being asked to do something without any evidence of the allegations being made by a plaintiff that doesn’t have standing,” Hall said.
Will Davidson, an attorney for the South Carolina DMV, appeared to contradict earlier statements that there had been a problem with the DMV’s process, arguing that the agency was not responsible for ensuring voters were qualified as the law only empowered them to check if potential voters wanted to register. Qualification was legally the responsibility of county election boards.
“The legislature doesn’t pass laws that are nonsensical and have no meaning,” Davidson argued, saying that DMV employees are instructed to alert customers when they were unable to register at the DMV.
Those impacted should have had ample time to lookup their own registration, which the majority of them did, Davidson said.
“If one of these 1,896 came in in July and haven’t received a card they really ought to be on notice,” Davidson said, adding that the case should be dismissed because “there ain’t a problem.”