COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - A government watchdog group has filed a legal challenge to the constitutionality of the elections process South Carolina, a move one top lawmaker says could complicate this year’s races if the issue isn’t decided quickly.
Last month, the South Carolina Public Interest Foundation filed a request that a judge declare invalid a state law laying out how county-level elections boards are constructed. The lawsuit, filed in Richland County, says that a 2008 law on combined county election commissions and boards of voter registration is unconstitutional.
“Act 312 of 2008 is a collection of many previously-enacted unconstitutional single-county and special acts addressing various counties in the State of South Carolina,” attorneys for the group wrote.
Sen. Larry Martin, Judiciary Committee chairman, has warned that such a lawsuit could make a mess out of this year’s elections. The Pickens Republican is urging his colleagues to pass his bill, which would create a statewide model for combined election and voter registration offices.
“It leaves a cloud of doubt over the apparatus that actually runs the elections around the state. In my view, that jeopardizes our ability to hold elections this year,” Martin said. “The State Election Commission cannot run elections without a local election and registration office.”
Martin’s bill was a reaction to a ruling that a 2011 law merging Richland County’s election and voter registration boards violated the state constitution’s prohibition against single-county legislation. Judge Thomas Cooper said it represented a special exception for Richland County’s governance model, apart from already existing state law.
But that law also is questionable because it essentially wrapped into a single law counties’ various governance models. It was legislators’ 2008 attempt to make some single-county laws constitutional, a year after the attorney general’s office concluded they weren’t.
To clarify things, Martin requested an opinion from the Attorney General’s Office, which found the law isn’t constitutional for the same reasons as argued in the lawsuit.
“Act No. 312 is simply an amalgam of laws, each for a particular county,” Solicitor General Robert Cook wrote in the March 12 opinion. “Even those counties which do have combined boards have different structures, compositions, etc., depending upon the individual county. Thus, while the act may appear general, it is far from uniform, but is instead a collective hodgepodge of local laws.”
Such opinions carry no legal weight but are considered advisory.
If the Senate doesn’t send Martin’s bill to the House before May 1, its chance for passage is slim, as it will then face a required two-thirds vote to be considered in that chamber.
Martin hopes the state doesn’t relive the problems of 2012, when 250 candidates were kicked off primary ballots after back-to-back decisions from the state Supreme Court over improperly filed financial forms.
Their ouster stemmed from confusion over a 2010 law requiring online filing, which failed to match up separate sections of state law. The Legislature approved a law fixing that last year.
Martin said his bill could move forward in the Senate this week. But even if that process doesn’t go quickly, Martin said he thinks the lawsuit will likely go to the Supreme Court, which could decide the issue in enough time before the elections.
South Carolina’s primary elections are June 10, with a runoff June 24 if required. The general election is Nov. 4.
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Kinnard can be reached at https://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP
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