South Carolina’s Republican presidential primary is Saturday, Feb. 24, 2024. Polling places open at 7 a.m. for in-person voting. (Kate Brindley | New Hampshire Bulletin)
COLUMBIA — A judge will decide whether 1,896 South Carolina teenagers who tried to register to vote while getting a driver’s license but were denied by a quirk in the state’s computers will be added to voter rolls for Election Day.
According to the state Department of Motor Vehicles, a review of its records identified the exact number of teens impacted by its system. Their information was sent Wednesday to the state Election Commission, said DMV spokesman Mike Fitts.
Whether the newly or soon-to-be 18-year-olds can actually vote in this presidential election will be up to the courts.
These teens were not yet old enough to vote when they applied for a driver’s license, but were eligible to register because they would turn 18 by the Nov. 5 election. Instead, the DMV system flagged them as ineligible for being too young, so the information was not forwarded to the State Election Commission.
That’s the issue at the center of an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Richland County. A hearing is scheduled for Friday.
The lawsuit seeks an emergency order to add any impacted teens to voter rolls.
More than 17,000 teenagers were eligible to register when applying for a license over the last 13 months. But most of them successfully registered to vote another way, Fitts said.
The state Election Commission isn’t doing anything with the information yet.
“We are waiting on the court’s decision for guidance on how to proceed,” John Michael Catalano, spokesman for the state Election Commission, told the SC Daily Gazette.
Republicans are fighting the lawsuit.
Both the president of the state Senate, Thomas Alexander, and the state Republican Party have filed motions seeking the join the case.
“The SCGOP has an interest in defending the integrity of the 2024 General Election — and protecting its Republican candidates up and down the ballot — against (the ACLU’s) attempt to interfere with the election after it has already begun,” reads Thursday’s filing from the state Republican Party.
The state party describes the request to add people to the lawsuit as an effort to “add unknown persons on voter rolls without so much as a second look.”
The Republican Party has opposed other efforts to shorten the voter registration period ahead of an election, according to the filing.
Earlier this month, a court extended the voter registration deadline by 10 days, to Nov. 14, to give people impacted by Helene more time. The state Republican Party disagreed with the ruling, saying the extension should have applied only to counties impacted by the tropical storm, which was more than half of the state.
The state Democratic Party has not intervened in the lawsuit. But Jay Parmley, state party executive director, said Democrats support it.
“There’s no excuse, there’s absolutely no excuse for not transmitting voter registration information from the DMV to the Election Commission,” said Parmley at an event Wednesday. “This should not be an issue, period. So go ACLU.”
Early voting began Monday in South Carolina and quickly broke records for turnout. In the first three days, almost people 400,000 voted early.