Michael R. Burchstead, attorney for the South Carolina Election Commission, delivers his argument in court on Friday, Oct. 25, 2024 (Abraham Kenmore/SC Daily Gazette)
COLUMBIA — Nearly 1,900 teens who tried to register to vote through the state Department of Motor Vehicles cannot be added to the voter rolls before the election, a judge ruled Friday.
The request came from an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit against the DMV and the State Election Commission, filed on Tuesday. The lawsuit said 17-year-olds who would turn 18 by Election Day, and therefore were eligible to vote, had been automatically denied when trying to register to vote through the DMV and should be given an opportunity to vote this election.
In a ruling Friday afternoon, Circuit Court Judge Daniel Coble 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.”
The ACLU said in a statement they have not yet decided if the organization will appeal Coble’s ruling, but did say they will continue the case to prevent the issue coming up in future.
“Our government failed these young voters, and now the same government is making excuses rather than making things right,” Allen Chaney, the ACLU legal director, said in a statement after the ruling. “When ‘it’s too hard to fix’ becomes an acceptable reason to disenfranchise voters, we know that there’s work to do.”
The state DMV is required to assist customers with registering to vote under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, a federal law. But a glitch in the DMV automated system did not allow anyone to register who was not already 18, according to the ACLU and information filed by the DMV.
Over 17,000 teens who would turn 18 by Election Day applied for a driver’s license in the run up to the election. Of these, 6,240 eventually registered to vote some other way.
But the DMV on Wednesday identified 1,896 teens who were 17 when they applied for a drivers license, turned 18 by the general election, checked a box asking to be registered to vote but were never successfully registered. None of the impacted teens was identified in the lawsuit.
The ACLU made their case Friday morning at a hearing before Coble that these teens should be either added to the voter roll or notified of the issue and given the opportunity to finish registering to vote before Election Day.
The ACLU said that the lack of support for 17 year olds from the DMV was not “equal protection” under the law and that the teens were never notified that they had not successfully registered after they checked the box.
Allen Chaney, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of South Carolina, delivers his argument in a Richland County Court on Friday, Oct. 25, 2024 (Abraham Kenmore/SC Daily Gazette)
“(The teens) affirmatively checked ‘yes I wish to register to vote,” argued Chaney in court. “They tried to register to vote. They thought they had registered to vote, and they will find out without relief from this court, that that was ineffective because of a problem that they did not cause.”
Along with the initial defendants — the Department of Motor Vehicles and State Election Commission — Gov. Henry McMaster, state Senate President Thomas Alexander, House Speaker Murrell Smith, and the state Republican Party joined the case to oppose the ACLU lawsuit.
The defendants argued that automatically registering the 1,896 teens now could disrupt the election, especially given that the lawsuit was filed the day after early voting began.
“If the court event tried to provide a remedy … then what the court would be doing, or what the effect of that would be, would be to risk a serious disruption to orderly and efficient election process,” said Michael Burchstead, attorney for the Election Commission.
Burchstead further argued that it was counties, not the state commission, that could actually register the teens.
In an affidavit, Courtney Saxon, director of branch services for the DMV, said that when the automated system rejects someone for being under 18, staff are trained to tell the applicant that they need to register another way.
The ACLU learned about the alleged issue after an Oct. 12 Facebook post from Rep. 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.
Noah Counts and his mother Kate, who brought the Department of Motor Vehicles rejecting 17-year-old voter registration applicants to the attention of a state legislator. (Provided by Noah Counts)
“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.
“I think it’s really awful that unless the election committee approves that these people get registered, these people who are going to be of voting age, did ask to be registered to vote, did everything right to fulfill their civic duty, they’re going to be denied their constitutional right to go vote,” he said. “It’s not right.”
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.
Registration for the Nov. 5 election was initially scheduled to end on Oct. 4 for in-person registration, but in the wake of Tropical Storm Helene the state Democratic Party successfully asked a court to extend the deadline to Oct. 14. That ruling was granted by Coble, but he said in Friday’s ruling that the situation with the DMV was different.