900 Dead Voters in SC: Fraud or Clerical Errors?

The South Carolina Attorney General's office and State Law Enforcement Division are investigating more than 900 cases of dead people being recorded as voting in the state to see whether there was fraud or clerical errors.

SC Attorney General Alan Wilson says, "If there's some discrepancy or some glitch or some mistake, we're going to look at it. And before I start throwing out the idea that there is fraud going on, I want to know. I want facts."

The question surfaced in relation to the state's new voter ID law, which requires people voting in person to have a photo ID. Critics of the law say it would hurt thousands of South Carolinians who are registered voters but don't have picture IDs.

State DMV director Kevin Shwedo wanted to know how many people could be affected, so he got the voter rolls from the State Election Commission, which show when someone voted last. He then got death records from the state's vital statistics office and the Social Security Administration, to eliminate people who've died.

But he found 956 cases of people being recorded as voting after they were dead.

"In my opinion, and I'm no expert in this area, dead guys shouldn't be allowed to vote," he says.

State Election Commission spokesman Chris Whitmire says the agency gets regular updates from the state vital statistics office and removes from the rolls voters who have died.

He doesn't know why more than 900 dead people show up has having voted, but doesn't think it's necessarily fraud. "We want to know what's going on. We want to get to the bottom of it and figure out if this is going on and, if it is, find out what's happening and stop it."

He says it's possible they could be clerical errors. For example, if John Smith, Jr. goes to vote and his name is right below John Smith, Sr., who died recently, a poll worker might accidentally fill in the box for Senior, showing that he voted.

"There could be a problem with the data or the way that the data was compared against each other. We just don't know at this point," Whitmire says.

Brett Bursey, executive director of the South Carolina Progressive Network, has been fighting the voter ID law since it was introduced. He doesn't believe the 956 "dead voters" data show any fraud.

"I know that at the precinct level, if somebody shows up that's dead, the chances are somebody at the poll's going to know that. And so for 900 of this to happen and no one to notice is improbable," he says.

The U.S. Department of Justice is blocking the state's voter ID law, saying it would suppress minority voting rights. SC Attorney General Wilson says his office will file a lawsuit against the DOJ within the next few weeks to defend the law.