The General Assembly and five local Republicans who led the effort to combine Charleston County's two voting offices last year were slapped Tuesday with a lawsuit accusing them of violating the state constitution.
Two Charleston County residents, one a former voter registration office director, filed suit in circuit court Tuesday accusing lawmakers of ignoring a key part of the constitution that prohibits county-specific special legislation.
According to the complaint, the bill that approved the merger affected only Charleston County. The S.C. Constitution stipulates that no laws for a specific county shall be enacted.
"We think the law is clear that this wasn't done the right way," said the plaintiffs' lawyer, Clayton McCullough. "It ought to be fixed."
The suit asks that the current Board of Elections and Voter Registration be scrapped, with the powers of registering voters and running elections returned to separate boards.
The plaintiffs in the suit are Mary"Fran" Bendure, former director of the voter registration office, who lost her job when the offices were combined, and Curtis Inabinett Jr., who was denied a spot on the board by the GOP majority.
Named as defendants are the S.C. General Assembly and five Charleston Republicans who led the effort: Sens. Arthur Ravenel Jr., R-Mount Pleasant, and Larry Grooms, R-Bonneau; and Reps. Tom Dantzler, R-Goose Creek, Wallace Scarborough, R-Charleston, and John Graham Altman III, R-Charleston.
The suit reopens a controversy that sparked heated rhetoric last year between Republicans and Democrats, and a veto by Gov. Mark Sanford. Republicans pushed the bill saying that combining the two offices was the only way to bring efficiency to the election process after multiple complaints surfaced at the polls during the 2002 election.
After the bill passed, it was vetoed by Sanford on the same grounds listed in the lawsuit: that it was specific legislation that only covered Charleston County. The stance is similar to the legal position taken by other governors who have vetoed or chosen not to sign legislation they considered special legislation since Home Rule was enacted in 1976. Lawmakers then overrode the governor's veto and the bill became law.
The issue became more controversial when the Republican majority on the Charleston County legislative delegation filled eight of the nine seats on the combined elections and registration board with fellow Republicans. The makeup prompted Democrats to question whether they would get fair treatment at the polls.
Though the Charleston County Democratic Party is not a party to the suit, Chairman Mullins McLeod said he supported the plaintiffs in their case and repeated his accusations that Republicans were running roughshod over the election process.
"The undercurrent in the whole thing is just because you have power doesn't make you right," he said Tuesday after the lawsuit was filed. "The election process doesn't belong to Democrats or Republicans. It belongs to voters."
McLeod added that the complaint asks a court "to come to the same conclusion that the governor and his legal staff did."
Republican lawmakers named in the suit Tuesday questioned the motivation behind it. "If Fran (Bendure) had gotten the job, would she have filed the suit?" said Altman.
"They don't have the people's best interest at heart," Altman said, adding that filing for the June primaries opens in two weeks and the new board has to be focused on those races. "These two people are acting like children, trying to destroy things."
Bendure could not be reached for comment, but McCullough said the suit does not ask that she be reappointed to her post as director of the voter registration office, or that Inabinett get a seat on one of the boards. It only asks that the offices return to their previous division.
Will Folks, spokesman for Gov. Sanford, said, "The governor's position today is exactly what it was when he vetoed this legislation. He had concerns that the law would take power away from local governments, and he believes this lawsuit shows that those concerns were well-founded."
