2017 South Carolina Code of Laws
Title 7 - Elections
CHAPTER 5 - QUALIFICATIONS AND REGISTRATION OF ELECTORS
Section 7-5-120. Qualifications for registration; persons disqualified from registering or voting.
(A) Every citizen of this State and the United States who applies for registration must be registered if he meets the following qualifications:
(1) meets the age qualification as provided in Section 4, Article II of the Constitution of this State;
(2) is not laboring under disabilities named in the Constitution of 1895 of this State; and
(3) is a resident in the county and in the polling precinct in which the elector offers to vote.
(B) A person is disqualified from being registered or voting if he:
(1) is mentally incompetent as adjudicated by a court of competent jurisdiction; or
(2) is serving a term of imprisonment resulting from a conviction of a crime; or
(3) is convicted of a felony or offenses against the election laws, unless the disqualification has been removed by service of the sentence, including probation and parole time unless sooner pardoned.
HISTORY: 1962 Code Section 23-62; 1952 Code Section 23-62; 1950 (46) 2059; 1961 (52) 50; 1963 (53) 155; 1967 (55) 657; 1974 (58) 2188; 1981 Act No. 1 Section 2, eff January 14, 1981; 1986 Act No. 345, Section 1, eff March 7, 1986; 1994 Act No. 365, Section 1, eff May 3, 1994; 1996 Act No. 408, Section 1, eff on the ratification of the amendment to Section 4, Article II of the Constitution of this State to change the age qualification to vote (ratified March 25, 1997).
Editor's Note
1981 Act No. 1, Section 2A, provides as follows:
"Section 2A. The provision of paragraph (b) of Section 7-5-120, as amended in Section 2, shall apply to all persons falling within the amended provision regardless of the date of their conviction."
Effect of Amendment
The 1981 amendment inserted the words "a felony" in paragraph (b) in place of the words "burglary, arson, obtaining goods or money under false pretenses, perjury, forgery, robbery, bribery, adultery, bigamy, wife-beating, housebreaking, receiving stolen goods, breach of trust with fraudulent intent, fornication, sodomy, incest, assault with intent to ravish, larceny, murder, rape"; substituted the word "offenses" for the word "crimes"; and substituted the words "service of the sentence, including probation and parole time unless sooner pardoned" for the word "pardon."
The 1986 amendment deleted former item (4), redesignated former item (5) as item (4), and made grammatical changes.
The 1994 amendment rewrote this section, primarily to provide that a person is disqualified from voting if he is serving a term of imprisonment resulting from a conviction of a crime.
The 1996 amendment substituted "meets the age qualification as provided in Section 4, Article II of the Constitution of this State" for "is at least eighteen years of age" in subsection (A)(1), and inserted "and" at the end of subsection (A)(2).
