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(by Nick Reynolds, The Post and Courier) – A South Carolina judge rejected a lawsuit against the state Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) alleged the agency improperly denied thousands of soon-to-be eligible 17-year-olds the right to vote.
Circuit Judge Daniel Coble on Oct. 25 rejected the contention the DMV unlawfully denied voter registration opportunities to more than 17,000 South Carolinians who would have reached the legal voting age of 18 by Election Day. He wrote that he could not provide any solution without overstepping the authority of the court, but also declined to dismiss the case.
“This Court finds that the relief sought by (the ACLU) is too drastic and would likely violate the separation of powers doctrine,” Coble wrote in a brief order filed just before 4 p.m. “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.”
Under federal election law, state DMVs are required to provide residents the opportunity to register to vote at the time they apply for a new or renewed identification card or driver’s license. And under state law, 17-year-old citizens may register to vote as long as they turn 18 on or before Election Day and meet all other qualifications to vote.
In this case, the ACLU said the DMV did provide potentially eligible 17-year-olds with forms that would have allowed their information to be passed along to the state Election Commission. They just never delivered that information, nor did they adequately inform the teens that they would actually need to register directly with their local board of elections to be eligible.
While those 17-year-olds may have checked a box on their driver’s license application expressing their willingness to register to vote, they were allegedly not told by the Department of Motor Vehicles that they could not process their request, nor were they adequately informed that they did not actually register.
That oversight, the ACLU argued in a court hearing, potentially caused thousands of South Carolinians to be disenfranchised without their knowledge.
Attorneys for the Department of Motor Vehicles argued state law expressly prohibits the agency from helping minors register to vote.
In the statute, the law says applicants under the age of 18 can only register to vote via their “county board of voter registration and elections,” a specific use of terminology they claimed to exclude the DMV.
Attorneys for the state also argued that the granting of a minors’ right to register to vote is not applicable under the Equal Protections clauses of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, meaning no possible violation of federal law could have ever taken place.
And at the end of the day, the ACLU of South Carolina did not have sufficient evidence of disenfranchisement: without affidavits from all of the teenagers who were allegedly denied the right to vote, the ACLU’s case, they argued, was backed only by assumptions. [It sounds like only one then-17-year-old actually made the claims. He then registered on his own. SEE “Background” below the questions.]
“I heard a lot of things said that there’s absolutely no proof of,” DMV’s attorney, Will Davidson, said.
The possible fallout from the rule was also limited.
Of the 17,114 minor DMV customers who were potentially eligible to apply for voter registration, approximately 6,280 eventually registered to vote via other means. And of the remaining 10,834 customers on the list, just 1,896 of them [even] checked the “Yes, I wish to register to vote” box on their license application — meaning only a relatively small number of teenagers were potentially misled by the DMV process.
With all of the deadlines to register to vote already weeks in the past, attorneys for the state and the South Carolina Republican Party argued litigation could risk a “serious disruption” to an orderly and effective voting process, hurt public faith in elections, and potentially overrule the legislature’s authority to establish the date of elections or the process that is required to vote.
Questions
1. In a lawsuit filed by the ACLU, what did lawyers accuse the South Carolina DMV of doing? Be specific.
2. How did Circuit Judge Daniel Coble rule on the lawsuit against the DMV?
3. a) What does federal election law require state DMVs to do regarding voter registration?
b) What does South Carolina state law allow minors to do regarding voter registration?
4. What information does the ACLU allege the DMV did not give minors when checking the box saying they wished to register to vote?
5. What arguments did the defense attorneys make?
6. What are the numbers: eligible minors, those who voted via other means (their county election boards – most likely online) and those who actually checked “Yes, I wish to register.”
7. There is no indication that this problem occurred at every DMV in the state. However, a small number – even one – doesn’t mean the system shouldn’t work better than it did. Those who get drivers licenses through their state DMV know about the frustrations with this government agency. What does this teach you about counting on the DMV to properly handle your registration to another agency (the Election Commission)?
Background
The ACLU learned about the alleged issue after an Oct. 12 Facebook post from Rep. Elizabeth Spencer Wetmore, D-Folly Beach, who heard about the issue first-hand from 17-year-old Noah Counts.
Counts, who lives in Charleston, turns 18 on Nov. 1, and he got his driver’s license in February of this year, making sure to check the box saying he wanted to register to vote.
“I went up and I asked the clerk there, like, ‘hey, is it really this easy to get registered?’” Counts told the SC Daily Gazette Thursday. “And she essentially told us multiple times that ‘no, it’s just that easy, all you have to do is tick that box and you’ll be registered to vote Nov. 5.’”
Counts decided to check in September where his voting precinct would be, and that’s when he saw he was not registered to vote. He successfully registered online, and his mother, who knew Wetmore, brought the issue to the legislator’s attention.
“We just handed it off to her just to make sure, and eventually that spiraled into this,” Counts said.
Counts said he knew of at least one friend who had run into the same issue.
On Friday afternoon, Counts said he was angry about the ruling, re-iterating to the Gazette in a text message he felt the court was taking away the right to vote for other teens.
A spokesman for the State Election Commission said the agency recognizes the importance of encouraging eligible people to vote.
“However, with less than two weeks remaining until Election Day, we do not believe the Court could have ordered effective relief for the situation,” said spokesman John Michael Catalano. “We believe that attempting to provide the relief sought by the plaintiffs would risk introducing disorder into the voting system at a time when early voting has already started and the staff for the county voter registration offices are very busy conducting early voting and preparing for Election Day.
(from an Oct. 25 South Carolina Daily Gazette article)
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