Auditor: Secretary of State not accepting calls as ACLU demands answers with voter roll purge

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — The ACLU is asking for more information from the South Dakota Secretary of State (SOS) with concerns that the state may have violated federal law and may have stripped voting access from naturalized U.S. citizens.

Following an announcement from the South Dakota Department of Public Safety (DPS) that 273 ‘noncitizen’ voters had been removed from South Dakota voter rolls less than 30 days before the November general election, the ACLU is calling for details on how the purge was carried out and how the citizenship status of the removed individuals was determined.

UPDATE: 112 ‘noncitizens’ found on Minnehaha Co. voter rolls

Samantha Chapman with the ACLU of South Dakota spoke with KELOLAND News about the matter on Wednesday.

“Federal law is really clear that you can’t remove, in a systemic and blanketed way, voters from your voter rolls within 90 days of a federal election,” said Chapman. “So to see a press release from the Secretary of State’s office — the Department of Public Safety stating they have done exactly that a mere 29 days before the next election was deeply concerning to us.”

Chapman says the ACLU reached out to the SOS’ office for clarification on how the voters were investigated, how they were removed and whether or not they were notified.

“When you remove voters in that blanketed way, you might remove otherwise eligible voters who now have less and less time to register to vote and could be disenfranchised,” said Chapman.

We asked Chapman if the ACLU had gotten any answers to the questions they had asked. Despite a short conversation with Deputy SOS Tom Deadrick, she says they did not get any answers.

The voter registration deadline is October 21.

But if these potential voters were all deemed noncitizens by the state government, what is the issue? Chapman explains, using recent example from Virginia, Alabama and Texas.

“People are coming forward who are naturalized citizens — who were removed in that purge because the data that those governments were using to determine citizenship status was outdated,” she said.

When it comes to why the information is possibly outdated, Chapman pointed out legal noncitizen permanent residents of the U.S. can get driver’s licenses, but that those licenses are only renewed every five years.

In the state of South Dakota, drivers licensing is done through the DPS, and voter registration can be updated during the licensing process.

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If in the interim 5-year period between renewing a license, a noncitizen becomes a naturalized citizen and registers to vote, the DMV citizenship data would then be out of date until the newly naturalized citizen would need to renew their license.

“If you have become a naturalized United States citizen over the last five years, essentially, I would strongly encourage you to check your voter registration,” said Chapman.

This legwork on behalf of the voter may be necessary, as it is currently not publicly known if the voters whose registration has been purged have been notified of it.

Auditor’s questions remain unanswered

KELOLAND News spoke Tuesday with Minnehaha County Auditor Leah Anderson who said she received a list of 112 noncitizens removed from Minnehaha County voter rolls.

We checked in with Anderson again Wednesday afternoon and she told us that her office has had the chance to work down the list.

“We went through and looked at each voter to see if the, one, had received an acknowledgment card, which they had — meaning that they received a card telling them that they were eligible to vote,” said Anderson, “And then two, we also looked at their voter history to see if anybody had voted, which none of these individuals had.”

Anderson was sure to emphasize that none of the 112 individuals on her list had any voting history in South Dakota, either in prior elections or in the current election cycle by way of absentee ballots.

One major concern Anderson expressed at this point — similar to that of the ACLU — is whether these people have been notified by the SOS of their change in registration.

“I don’t believe at this point in time — I haven’t received an answer — but [the SOS] haven’t notified these individuals, which is a requirement,” Anderson said. “If we sent someone an acknowledgment card telling them that they could vote, then they should be notified to let them know of this error that occurred. I don’t know what has been sent to these individuals at this time.”

We asked Anderson, given the lack of indication that the SOS office would be reaching out to these individuals, if she had an intention to do so herself in order to inform them of the change in their registration and to verify their citizenship status.

“I would love to have the time to do that, but we are already pretty stressed in our office with a lot of tasks that need to happen before this election occurs,” Anderson said. “We’re already working until 8:00 or 9:00 at night. We’re working on Saturdays and Sundays. We don’t really have the capacity to do additional work that was just dropped in our lap on Tuesday at 3:30 p.m.”

Even if the auditors in impacted counties do intend to reach out, Chapman says this is still far from ideal.

“That’s deeply concerning for many reasons, but primarily because from some county auditors here in South Dakota, we’ve seen a pattern of behavior that is looking to disenfranchise as many voters as possible through denying voter registration applications due to a person’s residential address to allowing improper challenges to absentee ballots moving forward from the June primary election,” said Chapman. “I don’t have a whole lot of faith in this patchwork system of county auditors now trying to piece through who is eligible voter and who is not.”

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Chapman says the National Voter Registration Act is written to balance competing interests.

“We don’t want to disenfranchise people unfairly. We also want to make sure that our voter rolls and people who are registered to vote are legally eligible to vote in in South Dakota and the United States,” she said.

According to Chapman, the reason there is the ban on systemic purges within 90 days of an election is that any person whose right has been wrongly stripped may not have adequate time to re-register.

Ultimately, there is lots that is still unknown surrounding the purge of voters in South Dakota.

An email sent Tuesday to the SOS’ office by KELOLAND News requesting information on the process went unanswered, in a follow-up email on Wednesday morning, KELOLAND News asked the SOS’ office if they had a response to the statement by the ACLU.

At 3:50 p.m. on Wednesday, Rachel Soulek, director of the SOS’ division of elections responded, asking us to provide them the ACLU statement we were referring to.

While communications between KELOLAND and the SOS’ office have been sparse, so too is the case for the Minnehaha County Auditor, according to Anderson.

“It’s disappointing that we have that lack of communication. It’s hard for us to do a good job in our office when we don’t have good communication with the Secretary of State’s office,” said Anderson. “My only resource of their office is to be able to email them. They will not accept phone calls, whether it’s from me or the general public — so we have to resort to email communication, and I don’t think that’s adequate.”

Chapman says the ACLU is also waiting on more information from the SOS.

“Certainly we are pressuring the Secretary of State’s office to give us that information as soon as possible so that we can do our own investigation and we can do our work in our own outreach,” said Chapman. “We’re also doing our best to use our platforms to remind voters that they need to check their voter registration and make sure that it is up to date.”

“Ultimately,” she added, “we are at the mercy of the information provided to us from the Secretary of State’s office at this point.”