DMV Glitch that Disqualified Young Voter Registrations Fixed

By: Skylar Laird/S.C. Daily Gazette

COLUMBIA — The state Department of Motor Vehicles has fixed a glitch in its system that automatically disqualified 17-year-olds from registering to vote, ending a legal fight with the state American Civil Liberties Union, the civil rights group announced Monday.

Under state law, teenagers who will turn 18 by Election Day can register to vote up to 13 months in advance. One way of doing so would be for teens to check a box while applying for a driver’s license saying they want to register.

But the state DMV’s system was set up to filter out applicants who weren’t already 18 when they clicked the button, regardless of whether or not they would be old enough to vote by the election. The system did not forward the information of more than 17,000 teenagers to the State Election Commission who would have been eligible to vote by Election Day but didn’t tell them that, according to the state ACLU.

Nearly 1,900 of those teenagers didn’t register any other way, meaning they were out of luck when it came time to vote in November, attorneys for the DMV said previously.

The issue prompted a lawsuit from the ACLU, which unsuccessfully asked a Richland County judge in October to add those voters to the rolls. The group dropped the case in December. But in a March 26 letter, an ACLU attorney threatened to file another lawsuit in federal court arguing the DMV had violated a 1993 federal law requiring the agency help people register to vote.

By that point, the DMV had already fixed the problem, attorney Erin Baldwin said in a March 27 letter to an ACLU attorney.

“Please know that our agency moved as quickly as possible with a very old computer system to achieve the reprogramming necessary to accomplish this goal,” Baldwin wrote in the letter provided to the Gazette.

The DMV will collect information from anyone 16 and older who selects that they would like to register to vote, which it will then send to the state Election Commission. The Election Commission can then register voters who will turn 18 by the election and save the information of those not yet eligible to be registered, Baldwin wrote.

“The SCDMV will continue to work proactively with the State Election Commission to ensure we meet all requirements established in law for voter registration,” DMV spokesman Mike Fitts said in an email.

The ACLU, along with the state League of Women Voters and NAACP, celebrated the change as a win for voters’ rights.

“This victory is a powerful reminder that voting rights are for all,” Brenda Murphy, president of the state NAACP chapter, said in a statement. “When young people have access to the ballot, they drive real change.”