For the past two years, the South Carolina House approved a measure requiring voters to show a picture identification at the polls. The bill finally became law last year.
Wednesday, the director of the S.C. Department of Motor Vehicles testified that – after examining fewer than 10 percent of the state’s registered voters – that as many as 957 dead people are listed as having voted. This is an incredible finding that not only validates the need for the Voter ID law, but also adds more fuel to the argument that the Obama Administration was playing politics when it rejected the law last month.
I’m thinking none of the dead people showed picture ID’s at the polls, and if a cursory check found 957 dead voters, I’d hate to see what the final number is once the other 2 million records are examined.
The Obama Administration rejected the Voter ID law as part of an ongoing crusade against our state. It did this after receiving inaccurate data provided by the S.C. Election Commission and its director, Marci Andino – according to a study by the Associated Press. The Election Commission told the Justice Department that 240,000 registered voters lacked a picture ID. Our DMV, in a feat of nothing more than basic record-checking, found 37,000 voters on the Commission’s list were dead, 334 were registered at the same address, 25 were registered at the Sumter County jail, and an unreported number had Social Security numbers of 000-00-0000 or 999-99-9999.
Under the provisions of our Voter ID law, people in ourstate have to show a state-issued driver’s license or ID card, a military ID or a U.S. passport to vote. In December, the U.S. Justice Department determined the law was discriminatory, said the state had not demonstrated a need for the law.
They found all this, despite approving a similar and more restrictive law in Georgia.
South Carolina’s law even allows someone who does not have a picture ID to sign an affidavit attesting to who they are – something Georgia’s law does not do.
Democrats have repeatedly used the ridiculous assertion that the Republicans are trying to disenfranchise voters. They don’t make the same assertions in Rhode Island, where a heavily Democratic legislature also enacted Voter ID.
South Carolina’s Republicans are simply trying to disenfranchise the dead and those who would maliciously use loopholes in the system to defraud our election system.
Perhaps the Justice Department is comfortable with dead people voting – after all, the dead have been voting in Chicago for decades.
The House Republican Caucus supports Attorney General Alan Wilson’s intention to file a lawsuit against the Justice Department, and we also support his calls for SLED to investigate the DMV’s findings. This is clearly an issue that will go back to the Federal courts, and Voter ID laws have already been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Our democracy will be at its most healthy when we have 100 percent voter participation, and the Republican Caucus firmly believes that.
But when you go to the polls this year, apparently you should check the pulse of the person next to you in line.