957 Dead Voters in South Carolina Cast Ballots

According to the Director of the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) in South Carolina, 957 deceased voters appeared to have voted in recent elections.  He said, "This is an alarming number, and clearly necessitates an investigation into potential criminal activity."  The South Carolina Attorney General requested an investigation by the State Law Enforcement Division, writing, “No right is more precious than the right to vote and no process is more important in terms of integrity than the election process. Voter fraud cannot be tolerated.”

This news was uncovered by the DMV Director Kevin Schwedo in testimony before a South Carolina House subcommittee.  The DMV analyzed the records of the South Carolina Election Commission, the South Carolina Department of Vital Statistics and the Social Security Administration.  The DMV discovered that more than 239,000 voters who do not have an South Carolina driver’s license or identification card, and about 37,000 of them were dead; 957 of those people could have voted.

You might be one of those that dismisses claims of this type of vote fraud (posthumous voting), but apparently it’s pretty easy to convince election officials that you are a voter they don’t realize is dead, as expose videographer James O’Keefe discovered (and shows in his newest Youtube video).  At the New Hampshire primary (a state that does not have photo voter ID), O’Keefe arranged for a person to claim to be a voter who is actually dead but still on the voter rolls.  Because there was no photo ID confirming that person’s identity, election officials were going to let that person cast a ballot.

Vote fraud in elections can be combated by certain reforms like voter ID.  South Carolina state legislators recognized the threat that fraud poses to the integrity of elections, and that’s why they passed a voter ID law last year and the governor signed it.  But there is opposition to this necessary electoral reform by Obama’s Justice Department, which rejected the voter ID law using its authority under the Voting Rights Act.

As South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley said at the signing and continues to say today even after the DOJ rejected the law: “if you can show pictures to buy Sudafed, if you can show a picture to get on an airplane, you should be able to show a picture to make sure we do what is incredibly inherent in our freedoms and that’s the ability to vote.”