A federal judge in South Carolina ruled Wednesday that an election integrity advocacy organization has the right to review the state’s voter rolls for ineligible voting.
U.S. District Court Judge Joseph F. Anderson Jr., an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, ruled that the South Carolina State Election Commission (SEC) could not block the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) from reviewing the Palmetto State’s voter rolls, despite it being an out-of-state organization.
Because voter rolls are a matter of public information under federal law, the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA), the SEC could not block PILF from reviewing its Statewide Voter Registration List (SVRL), the court’s opinion explained.
“South Carolina’s prohibition on the distribution of the SVRL to only eligible South Carolina voters conflicts with the NVRA’s mandate that all records concerning maintenance and accuracy activities be made available for ‘public inspection,’” Anderson wrote. “Because adherence to South Carolina law would frustrate application of the Federal mandate, the state law must yield.”
The SEC, South Carolina’s executive agency responsible for administering elections, argued that state law would prohibit PILF from obtaining the voter records because the group is not a “qualified elector” in South Carolina. It therefore blocked PILF’s initial request for the data in February.
PILF is not a South Carolina voter, but “describes itself as a ‘public interest law firm dedicated to election integrity’ which ‘protects the right to vote and preserves the Constitutional framework of American elections through litigation, investigation, research, and education,’” the opinion noted.
