Voters cleared in South Carolina, not that you’ll ever hear the results of the investigation:
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — No one intentionally cast a ballot in South Carolina using the names of dead people in recent elections, despite allegations to the contrary, according to a State Law Enforcement Division report obtained Friday by The Associated Press.
Attorney General Alan Wilson asked the agency to investigate last year after the Department of Motor Vehicles determined in early 2012 that more than 900 people listed as deceased also had voted in recent years.Wilson referred the information to state police, saying that the number of people cited in the analysis “is an alarming number and clearly necessitates an investigation into criminal activity.”
State Election Commission director Marci Andino had her staff take a look at questionable votes from the November 2010 general election, or about 200 of the more than 900 votes total – information that was also ultimately analyzed by the law enforcement division. Nearly half of the issues could be attributed to clerical errors, while several dozen resulted from DMV officials running Social Security numbers of voters against dead people but not seeing if the names matched. Several other issues arose from ballots cast by men with the same names as their deceased fathers.
The DMV’s initial analysis had been part of a research project on South Carolina’s new voter ID law, which was rejected by the U.S. Justice Department on the basis that it was prejudicial to minorities. Wilson, a Republican, subsequently successfully sued the federal government, and the law that requires people to have government-issued identification or a new state voter-registration card went into effect this year.
After DMV Director Kevin Shwedo testified before state lawmakers about his agency’s findings, Republican lawmakers and other elected officials immediately said the analysis and possible voter fraud showed why the new law was necessary.
Rep. Bakari Sellers, D-Denmark, who sits on the panel before which Shwedo appeared, questioned the expense of the police investigation, as well as the origin of the numbers to which Shwedo testified.
“What they used were fictitious numbers to promote a regressive piece of legislation,” he said. “They needed something to grasp ahold of to justify taking steps backward in our voting-rights laws. … It’s apparent that we were lied to, and that’s troubling.”
The Division’s determination was first reported by The Columbia Free Times, which obtained the report through an open records request.
The journalism team at Fox News pushed this fairy tale hard, because they were selling a voter ID law:
The South Carolina “dead voter” claim sprang from testimony from Kevin Schwedo, the director of the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles, who said on January 11, 2012, that more than 950 residents were recorded as having cast a vote after their reported death date. Schwedo made clear that this could have been the result of data errors or voters dying after casting an absentee ballot, but the state’s Republicans, led by Attorney General Alan Wilson, seized on the report as evidence of widespread voter fraud.
Wilson took his campaign to Fox News, where he received a platform for softball interviews from several anchors. The network used the “dead voter” story to promote South Carolina’s voter ID law, which had been blocked by the Justice Department.
Indeed, on July 3 the public release of an investigation by the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) provided the answer we anticipated: No voter fraud was found, no charges filed. As of noon E.T. on July 8, Fox had not reported on those findings.
The “dead people are voting!” stories are as regular as rain around election time. Is there widespread confusion on the difference between “voter lists” and “voting”? Why? Once again, media go with treating voters with suspicion based on little or nothing. It’s a strange way to look at voters, because we’ve traditionally treated voting as desirable civic engagement not as evidence of a possible criminal conspiracy. Someone was lying and manipulating here, and it wasn’t the unfairly maligned voters in South Carolina. It was state officials working with Fox News.
c u n d gulag
GOP POV:
Just ’cause you ain’t found ’em yet, don’t mean they ain’t there!
You know how we know?
Who the f*ck would vote for a Democrat in SC?
Well, apparently some people did!
And that just don’t feel right!!!
SO, KEEP LOOKING!!!
Gravenstone
Odds of Mr. Schwedo facing purjury charges for his performance before the state legislators? Let me guess, the Republicans in charge of whatever committees he spoke before were kind enough to dispense with requiring he do so under oath, right?
Just Some Fuckhead
This could be the dreaded Zombie Apocalypse we’ve been hearing so much about.
Kay
@c u n d gulag:
Opinions differ on voting. Presumptively fraudulent and malicious, or ordinary state recording process? Did they have a “vault copy” of their birth certificate? This investigation raises more questions than it answers.
Shakezula
“New Voter ID law challenges time honored practice of naming sons after fathers, grandfathers.”
Sit back and watch the mayhem.
dedc79
USCCB has called upon Congress to pass a new version of Section 4. But Republicans in Congress don’t really care what the USCCB has to say unless it relates to abortion/birth control.
Mnemosyne
Yet another way “The Simpsons” got something right.
Kay
@Gravenstone:
I don’t think it was him, unless he made up the numbers (which is entirely possible). They’re reluctant to “cull” voter lists for exactly this reason. One of these dead people was mowing his yard when the newspaper went to talk to him. He wouldn’t have been able to vote.
It was Wilson who trumped it up.
Emma
My surprise, let me show you it.
This reminds me of the Florida drug testing process http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/04/20/2758871/floridas-welfare-drug-tests-cost.html
burnspbesq
The complaint in a Section 3 bail-in case against South Carolina pretty much writes itself.
Note to recent law school graduates who are having trouble finding law jobs: voting rights litigation looks like a hot specialty area with significant growth potential. Unfortunately.
Kay
@Shakezula:
I used to hate it in the post office. They’d get so cranky! “that’s MY DAD!”
I felt they were unreasonable. I’m simply asking them to change their name.Hinting.Suggesting :)
RaflW
@Kay
Well, yes, as long as voters mostly equaled white voters. Now that we’re nearing tipping points (or past them), the “average voter” to a Fox anchor is a young buck or a Cadillac welfare queen. Or maybe a Kenyan.
RaflW
@dedc79:
Right. And this is where I get extra pissed off. Because the Catholic Bishops have to know that Republicans will not give a shit about this call to action. Democrats are Catholic’s natural allies on many economic justice issues, but theguys in the mitres have decided that abortion trumps all.
So they send out press releases, but do nothing of any real effort on issues like this. I was briefly a guest at Dignity USA’s conference last week (the LGBTA Catholic lay group) and they are pissed about the general abandonment of their church on economic justice teachings.
Kay
@RaflW:
It’s still weird to me, this attitude. Voting is like going to the library or exercising. Encouraged! I always feel like “calm down, it took me 15 minutes, it’s not that admirable.” It’s the whole point of the “I Voted Today!” stickers. Social pressure.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mnemosyne:
Aye.
When the dead rise, they always vote Rethuglican. Even Snowball.
Villago Delenda Est
@Emma:
The Governor Lex Luthor household did quite nicely on that entire scam.
Villago Delenda Est
@RaflW:
Frankly, the entire red beanie brigade needs to be crucified.
Emma
@Villago Delenda Est: Ain’t that the truth.
cvstoner
Yes, and this finding will also be “dead and buried” in section F of the news, too. Thus, the story will live on and on.
catclub
@Villago Delenda Est: Or ask who they plan to excommunicate for opposing a new VRA. When it turns out to be ‘nobody’, then you can ignore them.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Kay: Sadly, as we know, it often takes many hours if you’re the wrong kind of voter. Feature, not bug (as you also know). Remember where lines were short in Ohio, because they had plenty of machines in 2004? Coincidence, of course.
Violet
Thanks for your continuing posts on Voting Rights issues, Kay. I always learn a lot and it’s important to highlight the issue so we’re all aware of it and can keep others informed if the opportunity arises.
RaflW
@Kay:
Oh, totally! It’s a campaign I always participate in. And in more sane states like MN (though we’ve got our nutz, eh Michele?) voting is still seen and spoken of as a civic virtue.
But even here, our DFL secretary of state is often attacked for not being tough enough on “fraud.” Thank goodness our state’s voters threw out the proposed Voter ID amendment last November. What a crapload that would have been.
I just think the meme of suspicion of other voter’s intent or legality has been sown so long and for such political profit on the right that they’re dismantling the whole civic virtue frame. Which is a horrible thing to do, but as winning matters more than democracy, it’s a useful tactic in their warped minds.
Tone in DC
I pasted this earlier today in a different thread. Seems to fit better here.
Chris
@RaflW:
Though it should be noted that poll taxes often excluded poor whites as well as nonwhites.
The original American voting system was “yes, as long as you’re male, white, and above a certain income level” – e.g. “only the right people should be allowed to vote.” We started moving towards universal suffrage in the Andrew Jackson era, I believe – and ever since then people have been looking for ways to preserve the original system. Jim Crow in the South, machine corruption all over the place, etc. Voter suppression laws and gutting the VRA are just the latest example.
Mike in NC
SC Gov. Nikki Haley has a guaranteed spot on FOX News whenever not doing her job gets too hard.
Mike G
It’s a Repuke lying to advance Repuke interests, and it’s not about a Dem receving a blowjob, so methinks the Repuke outrage about lying will be very selective.
Kay
@RaflW:
I watched the ruckus over Franken’s race closely, and Minnesota did very well. I saw the sec of state on tv during it, and he looked tired and sad. The anchors were talking over him anyway, I don’t know why he bothered.
I lived in Minnesota for about 2 years and I always felt like it was a “good government” state. I had an infant and a crappy job and no money and it was absolutely freezing cold in the winter, but I still have a good feeling about the place.
DavidTC
Ed Blum runs the Project on Fair Representation. He is a conservative who lost a seat for Congress in the 1990s. He believed he was the victim of unfair racial gerrymandering that was mandated by the Voting Rights Act, so he then devoted his life to basically lessening the use of race in public policy, as he said. He founded the Project on Fair Representation with the help of the American Enterprise Institute in 2005 to challenge a 2006 reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act. He lost that battle overwhelmingly. Congress reauthorized the Voting Rights Act 390 to 33 in the House and 98 to zero in the Senate—margins that we just don’t see on anything today. And when Blum lost in Congress, he decided to go for the courts. And when John Roberts became chief justice, he knew he had an ideological ally on the court.
I saw Ed Blum on Chris Hayes, and he actually seems like a somewhat reasonable guy, who quite logically was annoyed he happened to live in a district that was deliberately mostly Democratic, with completely gerrymandered boundaries, and he had absolutely no chance to win an election as a Republican. It is, in a way, a reasonable complaint.
Of course, the problem is that he’s not actually trying to _fix_ that. Without the VRA, it’s entirely likely that he’d have been in an _even more_ Democratic district, as Republicans run around making one or two districts 100% Democrats, and the rest exactly 47% Democrats, or whatever number they can get away with.
Of course, this entire thing is nonsense. If the Supreme Court can strike down section 4 because it’s 50 years old, they could have just instead _modified_ it to some sort of sliding timeline, saying that the: You cannot punish states for more than 20 years (Or however long) for their behavior, so now the formula is set to ’20 years in the past’, not ‘1965’.
That would have been what a _reasonable_ court would have done.
Tone in DC
@DavidTC:
Apparently, this person Blum has initiated 12 suits, all somewhat similar to this one. In this transcript he comes across (to me) as extremely butthurt, more than anything else.
DavidTC
@Tone in DC:
No, his other suits aren’t ‘exactly’ like this one.
He apparently decided that the problem with the VRA is that it took race into consideration, and hence he’s run around suing about every possible law that does that. Basically, his theory is that any use of race in the law _at all_ is unconstitutional. So he’s filed a _lot_ of suits on those grounds, so they’re all based on that premise, but they’re all about different things.
I was just pointing out that his _original_ complaint (Because TV hosts always introduce him by talking about his original complaint of having to run in a crazy gerrymandered district) seems entirely reasonable, so people need to make sure they understand he’s not on a crusade to make sure that gerrymandering stops, even through he pretends that was the original point of the suit.
Whereas, in fact, he’s done absolutely nothing to hinder gerrymandering, and actually _removed_ one of the things that did hinder it, the VRA’s section 5. So he’s made the situation that he ‘found himself in’ that ‘made him decide to start this'(1) _more_ likely, not less.
1) I frankly have my doubts whether or not this was _actually_ his incentive, but whatever.