Background: Senate Bill 73 would define a person’s principal residence as the physical location where they currently live (and have lived for at least 30 days) in order to get a driver’s license and to conform to voter registration requirements.
Our position: The ACLU of South Dakota opposes Senate Bill 73.
Senate Bill 73 is intended to create a durational residency requirement for driver’s licenses as a means of enforcing the 30-day residency requirement for voter registration.
While matching these requirements is an important correction for consistency, because it brings the two requirements farther from the length of time required in South Dakota to establish residency – just one day – without a clear governmental interest to justify the added burden on voters, Senate Bill 123 is highly suspect under the law and likely unconstitutional.
In 1972, the United States Supreme Court affirmed in Dunn v. Blumstein that durational residency requirements for voter registration do not withstand legal scrutiny and violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Requiring a citizen to reside in a certain place for a predetermined length of time places an unnecessary barrier to a citizen’s right to register to vote and participate in elections. Our lawmakers should be doing everything they can to encourage participation from all eligible voters – not making it harder.
