Computer glitch could prevent 1,900 teenagers from voting in South Carolina

COLUMBIA, SC – A civil rights organization wants South Carolina to reopen voter registration for nearly 1,900 teenagers after the state Department of Motor Vehicles failed to notify election officials that they checked the box to register as they picked up their driver’s licenses. lead.

The teenagers were 17 when they went to the DMV, but would turn 18 by Election Day. An error in the DMV’s computers did not identify the teenagers as qualified and did not present them with an additional electronic form certifying that they are citizens, not felons, and otherwise qualified to vote.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit Tuesday, a day after early voting began in South Carolina. They offered several possible ways teenagers could register and be allowed to vote, and Judge Daniel Coble promised a decision later Friday after hearing arguments.

“This is a case about a fundamental constitutional right,” said ACLU attorney Allen Chaney. “First-time voters will be unfairly excluded from historic elections.”

But lawyers for the South Carolina Election Commission, SCDMV, the General Assembly and the Governor’s Office all argued that while they were sympathetic to teenagers who might miss their first chance to vote for president, it was too late to fix the problems of registration with the electoral offices in the county. busy with early voting.

Potential voters must be identified, checked for eligibility and added to the rolls. “None of this can happen before this general election,” said state Election Commission attorney Michael Burchstead.

About 6,000 additional teenagers affected by the error were still able to register after verification and saw that the process had not been completed and were not on the lists, including the 17-year-old who exposed the problem and notified his mother, who then left a Democratic lawmaker now what happens, determining the process.

Attorneys for the state said a burden should have been placed on teenagers to make sure they were able to vote before the registration deadline earlier this month.

The ACLU said that as first-time voters, they may not have known that clicking a box that said “yes, I want to register” meant they wouldn’t be registered.

“They have not been successfully registered, and they won’t find out until Election Day,” Chaney said.

Judge Coble said he understood the time crunch and would rule as soon as possible. In the first four days of early voting in South Carolina, more than 511,000 votes were cast, or about 15 percent of all eligible voters.

Coble decided earlier this month to extend the registration deadline by about a week because of widespread damage and power outages from Hurricane Helene. He stressed from the bench on Friday that it was “an act of God, not an act of man”.

The DMV worked with the ACLU to try to determine the scope of the problem. They had to individually review each application that fell within the guidelines to see if the teenager checked the box to register to vote.

And all of the state’s attorneys said they will work to make sure it doesn’t happen again

“We share with the ACLU the goal of free, fair, safe and secure elections,” said Kevin Hall, attorney for South Carolina Senate President Thomas Alexander.