SC House postpones debate on voter registration bill

The South Carolina House voted Wednesday afternoon to postpone until next week debate on a controversial bill that would put new restrictions on individuals and groups that register people to vote. "This is a very vicious bill," says Rep. Karl Allen, D-Greenville, who made the motion to put off debate. 

The bill would require third-party voter registration organizations, like the League of Women Voters, SC Progressive Network and NAACP, to register with the state and follow new rules for the voter registration forms they collect. 

For example, the forms would have to be turned in to the state within five days. If they're not, the third-party organization can be fined $50 for each form that's late, up to a maximum of $1,000. 

"Certainly a school teacher is not going to want to risk paying up to a thousand dollars in fines to get parents in a PTA organization that she's working with registered," says Lynn Teague, a member of the South Carolina League of Women Voters. 

The League says a similar law was passed last year in Florida and it led the League to stop its voter registration efforts there. 

Rep. Allen says the bill, if it were to become law, would suppress voting rights. 

"I know for a fact that there are many areas in the community where elderly people are not able to register to vote without doing these voter registration drives," he says. "People that are transient are not able to vote without doing these voter registration drives. The poor and disabled are not able to register to vote without doing these voter registration drives." 

But Rep. Alan Clemmons, R-Myrtle Beach, the sponsor of the bill, says it's needed to protect voting rights, because now there's no penalty if a third party takes your voter registration form and never turns it in. 

"You're providing that stranger with your name, your address, your Social Security number, your date of birth and an example of your signature. What could become of that private information? That's not a government agency that you're handing that information over to," he says. 

"What happens if an unscrupulous person decides to take advantage of the opportunity? Then not only are you disenfranchised of your right to vote when you show up at the polls because you're not registered, you also are then subject to the possibility of identity theft." 

He says a recent state case shows the need for the law. In 2004, Terence Hines was charged with forgery and multiple counts of fraudulent registration or voting, after he turned in more than 1,500 voter registration forms to the Florence County Voter Registration Office. Clemmons says Hines used the phone book to come up with names and addresses to fill out the forms himself. 

But Teague says that case doesn't prove that we need this law. She says since Hines was caught using current law, there's no need for Clemmons' bill.