State should finish driver’s license fix

As of January 2018, unless the federal government grants an extension, South Carolinians hoping to board a plane either should bring a passport to the airport or stay home.

If that sounds like deja vu, it should. The state was faced with an identical deadline eight years ago. Unfortunately, even with all that time to meet federal requirements, state residents still are at risk not only of being turned away at airports but also from federal military bases or any federal building that has security.

Ironically, both times Mark Sanford has been at the center of the dispute. In April 2008, Sanford, then governor, announced he would not seek an extension so the state could comply with the new federal identification law known as Real ID. Sanford declared Real ID to be an expensive and largely unnecessary program, and sent a five-page letter to Michael Chertoff, head of the Department of Homeland Security, detailing his concerns about the law.

Fortunately, Chertoff ignored Sanford’s grandstanding and granted the extension anyway.

Flash forward to last week. Sanford, now a U.S. congressman, sent a letter to DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson asking him to push back the deadline for South Carolina to comply with the Real ID law from January until next Oct. 10. The law generally would go into effect about a year after the deadline, whatever it turns out to be.

The idea behind this law was to establish a secure, modern identification card that is consistent nationwide. The ID also would be linked to a database containing information individuals used to get the license.

South Carolina already has complied with the first part. State-issued driver’s licenses have the required special security features that help prevent tampering, counterfeiting or duplication, and they use a machine-readable format.

But they still fall short of the second requirement – that they be linked to a digital database with information about drivers.

Granted, establishing this system is an expensive undertaking, with states bearing much of the financial burden. And South Carolina is not alone; 17 other states that face similar problems already have been granted extensions, Sanford said.

But it shouldn’t take more than eight years for South Carolina to meet the requirements. We hope that DHS will grant another extension, but lawmakers need to keep in mind the fiasco that would occur if residents can’t use their driver’s licenses to board airplanes or if defense contractors around the state can’t use them to enter a military base or a federal facility that normally requires a picture ID.

State lawmakers were extra-vigilant in establishing a law that required voters to use an officially approved picture ID to cast a ballot. We wonder why they seem so lackadaisical about complying with federal laws that are designed to prevent terrorists from boarding planes or entering military bases.

This story was originally published November 23, 2016 at 6:55 PM with the headline "State should finish driver’s license fix."