ACLU of Georgia Invites Citizens Threatened with Prosecution for Allegedly Double Voting to Contact Them to Request Legal Assistance

COLUMBIA – Two groups representing military veterans are seeking to keep South Carolina’s primary elections open to all registered voters. As the new motion to intervene highlights, a large share of military veterans identify as politically independent. Forcing party registration to vote in primaries could lock many independent voters, including veterans, out of a key part of the election process. Veterans for All Voters and The Chamberlain Network, nonpartisan groups representing some of South Carolina’s 400,000 military veterans, have filed a motion to intervene on the side of the state defendants in the ongoing federal lawsuit South Carolina Republican Party v. Bolchoz. The veterans are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of South Carolina. South Carolina’s semi-open primaries are publicly funded and administered by state and county election officials. Under the current system, any registered voter may choose to vote in one major party’s primary or another during an election cycle, but not both. On July 6, after failing to close primaries via Statehouse legislation, the South Carolina Republican Party sued State Election Commission Chairman Robert Bolchoz and other election officials in federal court. The state GOP, which holds a supermajority in both chambers of the Statehouse, is asking the court to grant the party control over who is allowed to vote in taxpayer-funded primary elections. “Elections belong to the people,” said Allen Chaney, Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of South Carolina. “Granting private political parties the power to exclude eligible voters from decisive, state-run elections is unfair and undemocratic.” “Once again, we’re witnessing politicians attempt to choose who gets to participate in our democracy,” said Adriel Cepeda Derieux, Deputy Director for the ACLU's Voting Rights Project. “In South Carolina, where deeply gerrymandered districts means many races are effectively decided in the primary, closing those state-run elections would silence hundreds of thousands of independent voters.” “My first duty station was in South Carolina, and I called the state home for my first two years on active duty. This case is about whether eligible voters can continue participating in publicly funded primaries without giving up their political independence,” said Alberto Ramos, Chief Executive Officer of Veterans for All Voters. “My brothers and sisters in arms who call South Carolina home today deserve a meaningful voice in the elections that often decide who represents them. South Carolina’s elections belong to South Carolina voters, and we are stepping into court to defend their voice.” "More than half of post-9/11 veterans do not identify with either party,” said Peter Lucier, Research and Advocacy Manager of The Chamberlain Network. “Those independent veterans deserve a voice in the democracy they served to defend." Thanks to a pattern of extreme gerrymandering that has made most Congressional and Statehouse districts politically non-competitive in the general election, primary elections are often the decisive contests in South Carolina elections. If the state Republican Party gets its way in court, independent voters who do not register with a party will be robbed of the opportunity to cast a meaningful ballot. In some races, the primary election is the only chance to vote. In the 2026 election cycle, for example, data from the South Carolina Election Commission identifies 56 elections where the primary is the only contested election. In those races, exclusion from the primary means complete disenfranchisement. Open primaries are especially important to veterans, who are more likely than the general population to identify as political independents. For example, in a 2024 survey of veterans conducted by Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, 55% of veterans said they did not identify with either the Democratic or Republican party. The South Carolina Republican Party has tried suing the state to exclude voters from state-run primaries before. In 2011, the state party was a plaintiff in the case Greenville County Republican Party Executive Committee v. South Carolina. But the party eventually abandoned the case after a federal court upheld the facial constitutionality of the state’s primary laws. In the 2025-2026 legislative session, lawmakers considered bills to amend the semi-open primary system (including H. 3310 and H. 3396, H. 5183, S. 109, and S. 113). Despite the Republican Party holding a supermajority in both chambers of the state legislature, none of these bills passed. As noted in today’s legal filing, a similar case unfolding in Texas may give South Carolinians a preview of what the South Carolina Republican Party will try next. After proposing legislation to close primaries and then amending party rules, the Republican Party of Texas sued the state in Hunt v. Texas, filed in September 2025. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, representing the state as a defendant in the lawsuit, made no defense and instead sided with his own political party attempting to overturn the state’s open primary system. South Carolina Republicans have followed a similar path so far. South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, who may be called on to defend the State Election Commission in this case, has already appeared at a press conference alongside his party’s leaders aiming to close primaries. If the attorney general is not interested in defending voters’ rights, then South Carolinians will mount their own defense.

The South Carolina Republican Party has sued state election officials seeking to close South Carolina’s primary elections, excluding independent and unaffiliated voters from participating in what are often the only meaningful elections in their communities. Veterans for All Voters and The Chamberlain Network, two nonpartisan veterans’ organizations, have moved to intervene as defendants to protect their members’ right to vote in the primary of their choice and to ensure the State does not settle the case in a way that extinguishes those rights.

The ACLU Voting Rights Project and the ACLU of Georgia have filed a lawsuit on their own behalf, seeking an injunction allowing them and similar organizations to provide legal representation to elections officials and poll workers. Georgia bars elections officials and poll workers from accepting any donations, services, or other gifts in aid of their duties, and this ban arguably extends to even pro bono legal services. Elections in Georgia, as elsewhere, have prompted extensive litigation and likely will do so in the future. The ACLU and ACLU of Georgia will be ready, including by representing elections officials as necessary.

CHICAGO, IL: A federal judge in the Central District of Illinois ruled Friday that Illinois is not required to share sensitive registered voter data with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), finding that the government’s broad demand for Illinois’ voters confidential information runs afoul of federal law. This decision marks the 19th consecutive federal court ruling nationwide rejecting the DOJ’s attempts to capture unredacted state voter rolls. The ruling stems from a December 2025 lawsuit—United States v. Matthews—filed after the Illinois State Board of Elections refused to turn over its unredacted voter registration file, a file that contains sensitive personal data about millions of Illinois residents including each individual’s full name, date of birth, address, driver’s license number and partial Social Security number. Shortly after the lawsuit was filed, Common Cause, the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, and three Illinois voters—Pablo Mendoza, Brian Beals, and Alejandra Ibañez—moved to intervene in the case, a motion that was granted. These clients are represented by Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, the ACLU National Voting Rights Project and the ACLU of Illinois. “This ruling is another decisive rejection of the federal government’s attempts to bypass its limits of power,” said Ethan Herenstein, staff attorney with the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project. “The Trump administration cannot manufacture a voter fraud crisis to justify a sweeping up of sensitive personal information from millions of Americans.” “This victory makes it 19-0 in stopping the federal government from seizing your private voter data,” said Maryam Jazini Dorcheh, Vice President of Litigation at Common Cause. “The record is clear: states run elections —not the president. We won’t stop fighting to protect voters’ privacy.” "The entire premise for this lawsuit is the myth of massive noncitizen voter fraud -- a canard that has been repeatedly debunked even by supporters of this administration," said Fred Tsao, senior policy counsel at the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR). "We are pleased that the court saw through this ruse and dismissed the case." “Today’s ruling is a critical victory for the privacy rights of every Illinois voter,” said Ami Gandhi, Director of the Midwest Voting Rights Program with Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights. “The federal government's attempt to seize sensitive personal records was an unprecedented overreach designed to intimidate voters and fuel false narratives about our election systems. By rejecting this demand, the court has sent a clear message that our democratic process will not be weaponized to harass or suppress Illinois voters, particularly naturalized citizens and people returning home from incarceration who are disproportionately targeted by these efforts.” “We are grateful to the Court for rejecting the Trump Administration's efforts to meddle in our State’s elections and create a nationwide database that can be used to harass voters,” added Kevin Fee, Legal Director at the ACLU of Illinois. “We must continue to fight the Administration’s lies about supposed voter fraud, and its attempt to suppress voting by sowing doubt and confusion about our elections. This case is one part of that fight.” Read the court’s order dismissing the DOJ lawsuit here: https://www.aclu-il.org/app/uploads/2026/07/US-v.-Matthews-Order.pdf