Greenville Leader

Sulaiman Ahmad, a second-year law student at the University of South Carolina and former Furman University student, recently had the opportunity to discusses voting rights with U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris.

"I was informed that Vice President Kamala Harris was interested in speaking with voting rights activists and that my name had come up," Ahmad said, according to a news release by the University of Carolina. "It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I couldn’t believe that I would have a chance to meet her at all, much less to talk about something I’m so passionate about."

Ahmad believes he was one of three South Carolinians chosen to meet with the vice president because of his history of helping secure the rights of all citizens to vote.

In 2016, during his junior year at Furman University, Ahmad discovered that his hometown of Greenville, South Carolina was requiring out-of-state students to fill out a questionnaire as part of the voter registration process, according to the news release. The questionnaire had irrelevant questions such as where they went to church and the address listed on their fishing license. 

Ahmad believed that these voter registration practices inhibited some students’ right to vote and worked with the South Carolina Chapter of the ACLU to file a lawsuit against Greenville County.

Weeks later, a judge issued an injunction against the county, ordering that it stop requiring the questionnaire and granted the students the right to vote.

During her visit to South Carolina, Harris also met with Elias Valentin, chair for the Greenville Democratic Party and Telley Lynnette Gadson, senior pastor at Saint Mark United Methodist, according to the news release.