COLUMBIA --- Groups aiming to overthrow the government are inching closer to freedom from a $5 "subversive activities" registration fee.

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday sent a bill to the Senate that would strip the section of state law requiring such registration.

Sen. Larry Martin, R-Pickens, said incorrect information about the bill's history and intent is circulating on talk radio and the Internet.

"There was some reference to this law ... as having been passed recently, and that we were targeting different groups for registration requirements on a political basis," he said.

The law was actually enacted in the early 1950s to address communism, he said. He introduced legislation to end the requirement last month.

Of what to do with the list of 11 groups that had submitted registrations to the state since the rule gained nation attention, Martin said, "I imagine it'll be filed away in a drawer somewhere."

He said one group paid its $5 fee with Confederate money.

Rene Daggerhart, a spokeswoman for the secretary of state's office, said there were no other registrations on record with the agency.

Among the information requested on the state's registration form is: "Do you or your organization directly or indirectly advocate, advise, teach or practice the duty or necessity of controlling, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States, the state of South Carolina or any political division thereof?"

Reports online that indicated the registration requirement became law last year apparently struck a nerve with some.

"The U.S. should use its nuclear arsenal to detach SC from the mainland, use heavy ships to tow the state into the Atlantic + sink it and its political idiots," reads the form of one registrant, which calls itself American Citizens for the Extermination of South Carolina.