Election Integrity Project: "We have never seen such widespread mismanagement or manipulation of the

[Gothmog]

93. Election protection and election law is one of my areas

I have volunteered a great deal in this area and I have never heard of this group. This group appears to be based in California and is not active in normal voter protection operations. This group seems to be focused on voter rolls and finding reasons to purge voter rolls. These reports of dead voters always make news but rarely pan out when looked at. If there are dead people voting, it will be by absentee ballots and not in person voter impersonation. If true, these cases are easy to prosecute and will be investigated. The trouble is that every time law enforcement looks at these so-called cases they find out that there is nothing to these reports. The latest such example of an investigation into dead people voting involves South Carolina https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/the-case-of-zombie-voters-in-south-carolina/2013/07/24/86de3c64-f403-11e2-aa2e-4088616498b4_blog.html

“We just recently learned that there are over 900 individuals who had died before the election (and had voted) and at least 600 of those individuals had died way outside the window that an absentee ballot could have been sent, so we know for a fact that there are deceased people whose identities are being used in elections in South Carolina.”

— South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson (R), on Fox News, Jan. 21, 2012

“We found out that there were over 900 people who died and then subsequently voted. That number could be even higher than that.”

— Wilson, on Fox News, Jan. 12, 2012

“Without Photo ID, let’s be clear, I don’t want dead people voting in the state of South Carolina.”

— South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R), in an interview that aired on Fox News, April 21, 2012

....Claims of voter irregularities often generate big headlines, but the follow-up generates much less attention. Believe it or not, the results of the full investigation into these claims has only now been revealed. So was any of this true?

The Facts

The State Law Enforcement Division (SLED) conducted an extensive probe, which was completed May 11, 2012. But the final report was just made public this month after a 13-month review by Wilson’s office. In fact, the report was only released after Corey Hutchins of the Columbia (S.C.) Free Times submitted an open records request under the Freedom of Information Act. He received the report the day before the 4th of July holiday — perfect timing for news designed to be buried......

The report confirms what the State Election Commission had found after preliminarily examining some of the allegations: The so-called votes by dead people were the result of clerical errors or mistaken identities.

For instance, sometimes a son had the same name as a deceased father, and poll workers mixed up a dead father with a living son. (This happened 92 times in the initial probe, and then further investigation found seven more examples.)

In 56 cases, there was “bad data matching,” in which the DMV records had the Social Security of a dead person associated with a living voter. The living voter — with a different name and birth date — properly cast a ballot. Thirty-two votes attributed to dead people were simply the result of too-sensitive scanners.

In one case, someone cast an absentee ballot before dying; their vote still counts under the law. In two other cases, people requested an absentee ballot, but died before returning it, so no harm was done. In other cases, the wrong voter was marked as having cast a vote, and then the marks were not completely erased. There were several other types of clerical errors, too numerous to mention. In the end, just five votes remained unresolved after extensive investigation.

In other words, there were not “hundreds” of zombie voters — just egg on the face of the politicians who promoted these “facts” across national television. So do they have any regrets?