COLUMBIA – South Carolina's population is growing, but its voter rolls are shrinking. A new analysis from the ACLU of South Carolina finds the state removed nearly 1.2 million people from its voter rolls between 2022 and 2025, more than the number of voters it added over the same period, leaving 85,571 fewer registered voters in South Carolina in 2025 than in 2022.
"South Carolina is growing, but you wouldn't know it from the voter rolls. Hundreds of thousands of people got knocked off for missing a postcard or moving across town, and it's Black and Brown communities that are paying the price,” said Jace Woodrum, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of South Carolina. “We're telling every South Carolinian: Check your registration today, because the state may have already taken you off the voter rolls without you knowing.”
South Carolina's deadlines to register in person for the November election are Oct. 2 (in person), Oct. 4 (online), or Oct. 5 (by mail). Voters who have moved recently, have not cast a ballot in the last four years, or don't have reliable access to mail delivery should confirm their registration is still active. Voters can check their status at scvotes.gov by selecting "Check My Registration."
The removals did not fall evenly across the state. South Carolina's Black and Brown voting-age population grew roughly 6% from 2022 to 2024, even as the number of Black and Brown registered voters fell by roughly 4% between 2022 and 2025. Counties with large non-white populations saw larger declines in total registered voters than the state as a whole.
The most common reasons South Carolina removed voters were failing to respond to a confirmation card mailed by the state, moving within a county, and moving out of a county. Removals tied to those three reasons far outnumber removals of voters the state has confirmed are deceased.
South Carolina's numbers land amid a broader national reckoning over ballot access. Since 2025, the Trump administration's Department of Justice has demanded complete voter registration files from dozens of states and sued more than 20 that refused, part of a stated effort to find non-citizens on the rolls. Federal courts have repeatedly rejected those demands, and a federal judge recently blocked the administration from using Social Security data to help build purge lists. Voting rights advocates warn the current climate, combined with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling this year in Louisiana v. Callais that weakened a key Voting Rights Act protection, has emboldened states to move more aggressively against their own rolls and maps alike, with South Carolina's own redistricting fight earlier this year as one example.
State election officials conduct voter purges on a regular basis by removing the registrations of people the state believes to have died, moved away, or become ineligible to vote. In South Carolina, the state proactively removes people from the rolls if they go several elections without voting.
In April 2025, for example, the South Carolina Election Commission mailed confirmation cards to the addresses of registered voters who had not voted since the 2020 General Election and had not since updated their voter information. The cards went out to 5 percent of the state’s registered voters. Anyone who did not sign and return the Voter Registration Confirmation Card within 90 days was marked inactive. If voters do not respond to the mail and do not update their voter registration information, they can later be removed from the voter rolls.
Check your registration today. Visit scvotes.gov and select “Check My Registration.”
A full statistical analysis, including a county-by-county interactive breakdown, is available here: https://www.aclusc.org/voter-roll-purges-in-south-carolina-data-for-journalists/
A toolkit including graphics and printable handouts about voter roll removals is also available on the ACLU-SC website here: https://www.aclusc.org/campaigns-initiatives/protect-your-vote/
Related Issues
Stay Informed
Sign up to be the first to hear about how to take action.
By completing this form, I agree to receive occasional emails per the terms of the ACLU’s privacy statement.
By completing this form, I agree to receive occasional emails per the terms of the ACLU’s privacy statement.
