Donald Trump and his Department of Justice's efforts to attack voting rights are facing a new legal threat in South Carolina, according to a letter obtained by the Post & Courier newspaper.
The DOJ is in the process of requesting that states purge their voter rolls of individuals flagged for removal by a federal audit, a move the administration says is meant to target voter fraud and to "ensure ineligible people are kept off state voter rolls and that only citizens are voting." Critics, conversely, have decried this as an effort to target lawfully registered voters. The agency has sent draft letters of this agreement to several states, including South Carolina.
On Friday, the Post & Courier reported on a letter sent to South Carolina's office of elections director, Jenny Wooten, from the Democratic National Committee. In it, the DNC warned that such a purge of voter rolls could inevitably lead to properly registered voters being removed, in violation of the National Voter Registration Act, and that it was prepared to sue the state if it agreed to the federal government's demands.
The letter further alleged that conducting a purge of the state's voter rolls "would harm the DNC and its members," and require the committee to "divert resources" intended for voter outreach efforts to identifying and re-registering any unlawfully purged voters.
DNC Chair Ken Martin said that the DOJ's effort amounts to a “big government power grab," attempting to bring control of voter rolls under federal oversight, despite the Constitution allocating that power to the states.
“The DNC won’t stand idly by as the Trump DOJ seeks access to South Carolina voters’ sensitive information and puts eligible voters at risk of being wrongly purged from the rolls,” Martin said in a statement to the paper. “Which is why we are calling on the South Carolina State Election Commission to stand up for South Carolinians and reject the Trump administration’s illegal agreement.”
As of Friday, the South Carolina Election Commission had taken no action in response to the DOJ's request.
"Nothing has happened to this point, and nothing will happen without it going through our commission in a public meeting," spokesman TJ Lundeen said in a statement to the paper.
The Trump administration's attempts to seize election authorities from the states are among the numerous efforts to undermine free and fair elections that experts and pundits have raised alarms over.
