"900 dead voters voted" claim in SC false

[Riot]

Who is misleading who?

http://www.fitsnews.com/2012/01/25/a...e-dead-voters/

S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley’s Department of Motor Vehicles (SCDMV) – which has previously used tax dollars to bail the governor out of a brain dead promise regarding our state’s ridiculous voter ID law – is at it again.

Earlier this month, the agency’s director Kevin Shwedo declared that 957 deceased South Carolinians had case votes in the most recent election.

“In my opinion, and I’m not an expert in this area, dead guys shouldn’t be allowed to vote,” Shwedo said.

We agree … and the report from Shwedo’s agency was immediately seized upon by those who support the new voter ID law as evidence of the sort of “rampant voter fraud” that this legislation was created to stop. Beyond that, though, Shwedo accused the South Carolina Election Commission (SCEC) of having foreknowledge of this fraud – and doing nothing to stop it.

Since then, however, Shwedo’s office has failed to publicly release its report – and has refused to provide its list of “dead voters” to the Election Commission. Only S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson (and presumably Haley) have been provided with copies of the document.

Amazing isn’t it?

You would think that one state agency – upon discovering what appeared to be a serious problem at another state agency – would have turned over the information it obtained in an effort to help correct the problem. This is especially true in this case seeing as Shwedo made his allegations against the Election Commission less than two weeks before South Carolinians voted in a presidential primary election.

Sadly, though – in addition to its demonstrated incompetence with regard to counting (see here and here) – Haley’s administration doesn’t play well with others, which is why it ran straight to the press with this “dead voter” information.

On Wednesday, S.C. Election Commission director Marci Andino finally got a chance to defend her agency against Shwedo’s allegations when she testified before a legislative subcommittee.

The verdict? “Dead voting” in South Carolina isn’t quite the problem Haley’s administration has led the public to believe.

According to Andino, the S.C. Attorney General’s office has provided her agency with six of the 957 alleged “dead voters.” That’s right – six.

Of those six “dead voters,” Andino discovered that one voter died after casting an absentee ballot. Meanwhile the other five were … wait for it … very much alive and eligible to vote.

Dead voters casting ballots? Not so much …

“Just as one instance of voter fraud is one too many, a single voter denied his or her right to vote because of a clerical error or the vagaries of data analysis is one too many as well,” Andino testified.

We couldn’t agree more.

Both Haley and S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson have made plenty of political hay by parroting Shwedo’s allegations. Specifically, they’ve both been using the “dead voters” line to protest a U.S. Justice Department lawsuit aimed at blocking South Carolina’s new voter ID law.

Based on this new information, it looks like both of them owe Andino an apology …

Meanwhile Shwedo – who not only accused Andino of incompetence but flat out accused her of participating in the alleged election fraud – owes taxpayers his letter of resignation.

Unfortunately, GOP lawmakers seem less interested in uncovering the truth and more interested in manufacturing instances of voter fraud in South Carolina. Why? Because they believe the new voter ID law enhances their prospects at the ballot box – which means this could wind up being one of Haley’s many lies that lawmakers actually embrace as one of their own.

That’s unfortunate, particularly seeing as South Carolina’s “Dead Voter-gate” appears to be yet another one of the Haley administration’s many lies.