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COLUMBIA, S.C. 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.
Read more here: Report: no widespread fraud in SC elections | CharlotteObserver.com
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."
Read more here: Report: no widespread fraud in SC elections | CharlotteObserver.com
For a while, you couldn’t turn on Fox News without seeing S.C. GOP Attorney General Alan Wilson saying things like, “We know for a fact that there are deceased people whose identities are being used in elections in South Carolina.”
Stoking the fire was a list of some 950 names that Republican Gov. Nikki Haley’s DMV director, Kevin Shwedo, said were those of dead people that appeared to have voted in recent elections.
“Well over 900 individuals appear to have voted after they died,” Shwedo said at one House hearing on the matter.
- See more at: Whatever Happened to Those ?Zombie Voters?? - Free-Times.com
“It hurt the public confidence in South Carolina elections,” he says. He's glad SLED's report confirmed what the elections agency always believed: there was no fraud, merely clerical errors and genuine mistakes.
- See more at: Columbia SC Blogs - News, Restaurants, Arts, Sports, Movies, Music
Who writes this stuff? "State election commissioner Marci Andino had her staff take a look at questionable votes from the 2010 election". "Take a look"? Does that sound like an investigation?
Doesn't matter. Voter ID nuts will still state South Carolina's "fraud" as fact. They have never let truth jor logic get in the way before, so why start now.
Yet another "voter fraud" story by the GOP turns up nothing. Surprised?
COLUMBIA, S.C. 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.
Read more here: Report: no widespread fraud in SC elections | CharlotteObserver.com
Create a boogey man then make a law against Boogey men
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."
Read more here: Report: no widespread fraud in SC elections | CharlotteObserver.com
Republicans crying wolf...
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.
Of the 207 cases Andino's agency examined, only a handful remained unexplained, according to the commission and the Law Enforcement Division.
Read more here: Report: no widespread fraud in SC elections | CharlotteObserver.com
Columbia, SC (WLTX) - Steve Benjamin has been elected as the next Mayor of Columbia, becoming the city's first new leader in 20 years.
Benjamin defeated his rival in the race, Kirkman Finlay III, in Tuesday's runoff. He received just over 55 percent of the vote on unofficial totals. Benjamin had 10,784 votes to 8,558 for Finlay.
Doesn't matter. Voter ID nuts will still state South Carolina's "fraud" as fact. They have never let truth jor logic get in the way before, so why start now.
A difference of 2,200 votes out of only 19,000 cast. I would imagine that elections for police chief, city council, county offices, and the like draw even smaller crowds making every vote count even more.
Most of the laws that affect your daily life are not written in Washington but in the chambers of these city and county officials.
If you can have 900 "questionable" ballots when there is no organized attempt to swing the outcome of an election, an organized attempt can be much more effective, right? So why leave yourself open to that possibility? Just because it hasn't happened (that we know of) yet doesn't mean it is not going to happen.
Erase almost all doubt and switch the nation to a free-AT NO COST TO THE VOTER-photo ID system that is required when a ballot is cast. We already require people to register to vote so why not make the process more perfect by placing the voter's photo on the document and ensuring the most basic tennant of our Republic:
One person; one vote
Not to be a doubting Thomas - Then does the Doubting Thomas dance
I mean if fact and investigations are swept aside for conjecture and hypotheticals then I'm taking the crystal ball I have and riding my Unicorn out of here
A difference of 2,200 votes out of only 19,000 cast. I would imagine that elections for police chief, city council, county offices, and the like draw even smaller crowds making every vote count even more.
Most of the laws that affect your daily life are not written in Washington but in the chambers of these city and county officials.
If you can have 900 "questionable" ballots when there is no organized attempt to swing the outcome of an election, an organized attempt can be much more effective, right? So why leave yourself open to that possibility? Just because it hasn't happened (that we know of) yet doesn't mean it is not going to happen.
Erase almost all doubt and switch the nation to a free-AT NO COST TO THE VOTER-photo ID system that is required when a ballot is cast. We already require people to register to vote so why not make the process more perfect by placing the voter's photo on the document and ensuring the most basic tennant of our Republic:
One person; one vote
No one has ever shown fraud in a local election being on the level of 2200 fraudulent votes by a method that would be prevented by Voter ID. Not even close.
We have managed to hold elections for over two centuries without Voter ID. I would venture that most "fraudulent votes" these days are operator error in the use of electronic voting machines. Voting booths manned by volunteer septuagenarians who can't even program their DVD players who receive five minutes of training on how to manage voting machines. That's who is handling our voting process. Senior citizens a little slow on the uptake.
A difference of 2,200 votes out of only 19,000 cast. I would imagine that elections for police chief, city council, county offices, and the like draw even smaller crowds making every vote count even more.
Most of the laws that affect your daily life are not written in Washington but in the chambers of these city and county officials.
If you can have 900 "questionable" ballots when there is no organized attempt to swing the outcome of an election, an organized attempt can be much more effective, right? So why leave yourself open to that possibility? Just because it hasn't happened (that we know of) yet doesn't mean it is not going to happen.
Erase almost all doubt and switch the nation to a free-AT NO COST TO THE VOTER-photo ID system that is required when a ballot is cast. We already require people to register to vote so why not make the process more perfect by placing the voter's photo on the document and ensuring the most basic tennant of our Republic:
One person; one vote
No one has ever shown fraud in a local election being on the level of 2200 fraudulent votes by a method that would be prevented by Voter ID. Not even close.
We have managed to hold elections for over two centuries without Voter ID. I would venture that most "fraudulent votes" these days are operator error in the use of electronic voting machines. Voting booths manned by volunteer septuagenarians who can't even program their DVD players who receive five minutes of training on how to manage voting machines. That's who is handling our voting process. Senior citizens a little slow on the uptake.
Again, the past is not a promise of future behavior.
I would make the same wager by the way...that it is erroneous on one or the other parties...so why accept it when generations old technology exists to correct it?
Too little too late, they never said that fraud didn't exist, it just wasn't as widespread as thought. And the big bold letters used in the op ignore the fact that the federal courts upheld the SC voter ID law, seems they didn't agree that it was a step backwards in voting rights. Just another fantasy fabrication from the left.
