South Dakota requires voters to provide documentation proving their citizenship when registering to vote in state and local elections. The League of Women Voters of South Dakota is suing to ensure that the state implements this new requirement in a way that complies with crucial, pro-voter provisions of federal law.
Back to topA new law in South Dakota is creating an unnecessarily confusing voter registration process for South Dakotans.
The administration of Senate Bill 175 (SB 175) is causing voters to lose their right to participate in local and statewide elections, despite being eligible to do so.
On behalf of the League of Women Voters in South Dakota and an...
A new law in South Dakota requires voters to provide documentation when they register to vote. Voters who provide these documents are registered to vote with a full ballot in all South Dakota elections, while those who fail to provide these documents are registered as “federal voters” only and cannot vote in state or local elections.
South Dakota has also implemented this new law in a way that is confusing and risks denying eligible registrants the right to vote in state and local elections in violation of federal law.
Campaign Legal Center represents the League of Women Voters of South Dakota and an individual voter in this lawsuit in partnership with Heidepriem Purtell Siegel Hinrichs, LLP, ACLU Voting Rights Project and ACLU of South Dakota.
Campaign Legal Center is challenging two key problems with South Dakota’s administration of its new requirement that voters provide unnecessary and burdensome documentation when registering to vote.
If a South Dakotan is registered as a federal voter only (and therefore unable to vote in local and state elections) due to a problem with their documentation, the state sends them a letter that misinforms them as to why their state registration application was rejected instead of alerting them to the real issue. The letter inaccurately states that they have been registered as a federal voter because they listed a nonresidential address on their voter registration form.
This letter is undoubtedly confusing for voters who did no such thing. It also fails entirely to notify them that the problem with their voter registration application is related to the documentation they provided. And without this notice, federal voters have no opportunity to fix the issue with their documentation and become full-ballot voters.
Second, South Dakota requires voter registrants who wish to present some of the most common forms of documentation — driver licenses, Tribal IDs and non-driver state IDs — to provide the original hard copy, rather than a photocopy. This means voters with these forms of documentation cannot register by mail or at a voter registration drive and become full ballot voters.
But other forms of documentation are acceptable in photocopy format. And hard copies of these three forms of ID do not convey any information that photocopies lack. In other words, the state can just as easily determine whether an applicant is qualified from a photocopy of one of these forms of ID as from a hard copy.
So, to avoid becoming federal-only voters, South Dakotans must currently register to vote in-person if they are using any of the most common forms of ID to prove their citizenship – another major barrier to South Dakotans’ freedom to vote.
Our democracy works best when every voter can fully participate. If South Dakota requires voters to provide additional documentation to participate in state and local elections, it must do so in a way that is fair and complies with federal law.
