Attention Zombies: Your Ballot Awaits

The legislature of the great state of South Carolina,  already pissed off because the Fed struck down their Voter ID law, would now have you believe that hordes of zombies somehow climb out of cemeteries all across the great state of South Carolina on election day to vote.  For Democrats, of course.

S.C. GOP state representative Alan Clemmons, who led the hearing, said (and with a straight face, we might add) “We must have certainty in South Carolina that zombies aren’t voting.”  OK, so he didn’t actually say the “for Democrats” part. But we know he was thinking it.

Here’s what all this “much ado about nothing” is about. On 1/11/11, S.C. DMV Director Kevin Shwedo testified that an estimated 950 corpses busted out of their caskets, dug out from 6 foot under ,found their way down to the nearest ballot box and voted.  Yes, he really did.  Interestingly enough, Director Shwedo wasn’t actually registered to vote in South Carolina at the time of his testimony.   But we digress.

Anyways, this concept of South Carolina being the only state in the Union that has a  ”Night of the Living Dead” thing going on every election cycle  was based on data collected from the S.C. Election Commission, the  S.C Department of Vital Statistics and also the Social Security Administration.   10 days later, S.C. AG Alan Wilson, on Fox News, proclaimed it a fact that dead people are voting in South Carolina.   Hence, the need for this voter ID law they keep squawking about. Because some 900+ zombies reanimate themselves on election day and make their way to a ballot box.  Never mind the fact that all this kicking zombies out of the loop stuff has the potential to disenfranchise 178,000 legitimate LIVING voters who really don’t have and are not able to get,  photo ID.

Insert S.C. Election Commission director Marci Andino.  Following a “can you please share with us how you figure zombies are voting based on the data we provided to you”  request from her department, S.C. state law enforcement officials cherry picked a grand total of 6 records of the 950 + zombies the S.C. DMV said voted.  According to director Andino,  some of the voters the S.C. DMV classified as deceased were very much alive and kickin’ – and eligible to vote.  See, lost in the Republican zeal to justify disenfranchising 178,000 people, was the little caveat given by S.C. DMV Director Shwedo at the very beginning of this exercise. He said they could very well have the number of corpses who voted wrong.  Of course you could, Mr. Shwedo.

Of those six, it was determined: 1 voter had died before his absentee ballot was counted, 2 ballots were found to have scanning errors (think hanging chad) and 3 more were found to have mistakes of the human error variety.  You can imagine our disappointment at the realization that zombies don’t vote, nor do they actually exist outside of the Call of Duty: Black Ops  video game.

Which bring us back to S.C. GOP state representative Alan Clemmons. Remember him? He’s the guy who was determined to make sure no zombies were voting in South Carolina. In a letter he wrote to the Department of Justice, he wrote, “It is an unspoken truth in South Carolina that election fraud exists.” When asked to elaborate on this comment following the second hearing, he declined, but said “If you’ve never heard that ( election fraud is happening) in South Carolina, then you need to start talking to folks out there in South Carolina that are involved.” Given that the burden of proof is on you,  Rep. Clemmons, we wait patiently for you to  produce a zombie capable of speech and reading a ballot.

And now, for something completely different.  A REAL case of voter fraud.

In the great state of Indiana, Secretary of State Charlie White, whose office oversees elections and investigates, among other things, voter fraud was found guilty of perjury, theft and … you guessed it, voter fraud. Secretary White listed his ex-wife’s address, instead of his condo, on his voter registration form because he didn’t want to give up his Council salary after he moved out of the district. Mr. White, in his plea to the judge, stated, “I never intentionally meant to do any of the things I was convicted of.”

White continued, “the charges he was convicted of Feb. 4 ignored a complicated personal life in which he was trying to raise his 10-year-old son, plan a new marriage and campaign for statewide office in 2010.”  Insert violin music here, Mr. White.

Message to our Republican friends. If you’re serious about stopping voter fraud, it’d be wise to stop being the party that commits voter fraud in the first place.

Just saying.

Yours truly,

political ole lady

Related articles

• Zombies Voting In South Carolina? (jonathanturley.org)
• The Election Scam That Isn’t (ken_ashford.typepad.com)
• Voter ID law issues highlighted in S.C. (cbsnews.com)
• The Loyal Opposition: Alleged Voter Fraud: Did Dead People Vote in South Carolina? (loyalopposition.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Republicans continue voter ID push ahead of 2012 elections (thegrio.com)