South Carolina’s refusal to forfeit its voter roll data violates federal law, a lawsuit filed Thursday alleges.
Brought by the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, the suit contends that Howard Knapp, the executive director of the South Carolina Election Commission, is violating the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) by declining to turn over the state’s voter roll data to the organization. The NVRA’s public disclosure provision stipulates that “[e]ach State shall maintain for at least 2 years and shall make available for public inspection … all records concerning the implementation of programs and activities conducted for the purpose of ensuring the accuracy and currency of official lists of eligible voters.”
The two exceptions to this provision are documents disclosing the identity of the government department through which any specific registrant was registered and those documenting that an individual declined to register to vote.
According to its lawsuit, PILF submitted a letter to Knapp on Feb. 5 requesting access to South Carolina’s voter registration list. The election commission’s general counsel declined the request in a response on Feb. 20, noting that PILF is an out-of-state organization and claiming South Carolina law only permits “qualified electors” living in the state to access such information.
PILF responded the following day, alleging that failure to forfeit the requested data constitutes a violation of the NVRA. The legal group additionally warned the commission it would sue to obtain the records if they were not disclosed within
