25 July 2013

The case of ‘zombie’ voters in South Carolina & Justice Department to challenge states’ voting rights laws 25JUL13

THE story from South Carolina is enough to justify the action by the US Justice Dept announced today. Repiglicans and tea-baggers are committed to change our Republic into a plutocracy, thank God we still have some people left in government that are just as committed to defending the US Constitution. From the Washington Post....

Posted by Glenn Kessler at 06:00 AM ET, 07/25/2013

“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
We don’t normally delve into statements so long after they were made, but this is an unusual case, brought to our attention by a reader.
Take a look at the rather definitive statements made by South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, such as “we know for a fact that there are deceased people whose identities are being used in elections in South Carolina.”
This was a rather shocking claim, which stemmed from allegations made by Kevin Shwedo, executive director of the South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles. (“Well over 900 individuals appear to have voted after they died.”) One state lawmaker famously declared: “We must have certainty in South Carolina that zombies aren’t voting.”
Haley did not entirely jump on the same factual bandwagon, though she made her statement on a Fox News program devoted to voter fraud. The Fox correspondent immediately followed her statement with these words: “Authorities say there is evidence that dead people voting is a real problem, according to a statewide investigation by South Carolina’s Department of Motor Vehicles. In January, it found that 953 ballots were cast by voters who are deceased.”
The allegations emerged as South Carolina officials sought to impose a new voter photo ID law during the 2012 election; a federal court delayed it from taking effect until 2013.
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.
We have embedded below a copy of the 476-page report.

SLED Investigation Into Voter Fraud

It turns out the claims of 953 votes by dead people actually involved not one election but 74 elections over a seven-year period.
So SLED’s investigation centered on 207 votes that allegedly were made by dead people in the Nov. 2, 2010 election — when a total of 1,365,480 votes were cast — after officials concluded that that batch constituted a “representative sampling” of the alleged voting irregularities. (Note that the number of alleged dead votes was less than 2/10,000th of all of the votes cast in that election.)
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?
As far as we can tell, Haley only addressed this issue once, in the context of the Voter ID law, and to her credit she mentioned no figure. “The governor never made claims that lots of dead people were voting,” said Rob Godfrey, her spokesman. “She did see the claims that were made by others, but her point was, and remains, that fraudulent voting of any kind should be prevented, and showing a simple photo ID before voting will help that. “
Shwedo, who at the time acknowledged that at least some of the allegations could be the result of clerical errors, did not respond to a request for comment.
“The initial claims reported to the Attorney General’s Office were alarming,” said J. Mark Powell, communications director for Wilson. “They were not vague allegations, but contained specific information. The state’s chief prosecutor cannot stand by when presented with such a situation. So SLED was asked to investigate this matter. We appreciate SLED’s hard work in preparing this report.”
Asked if Wilson had any regrets, Powell said the statement speaks for itself.

The Pinocchio Test

We are going to aim the Pinocchios at Wilson. More than anyone, he hyped these charges into certified “facts,” even before any real investigation had taken place. Indeed, the miniscule percentage of alleged dead votes, out of the number cast, should have urged caution.
Instead, he went straight to the television cameras—and then his office for months bottled up the report that revealed not a single claim was true.
Apparently, officials were hoping the whole thing would remain dead and buried. But zombies have a way of coming back to life.

Four Pinocchios

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http://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?hpid=z4&wpisrc=nl_pmpol

Justice Department to challenge states’ voting rights laws

By Sari Horwitz, Updated: Thursday, July 25, 1:25 PM

The Justice Department is preparing to take fresh legal action in a string of voting rights cases across the nation, U.S. officials said, part of a new attempt to blunt the impact of a Supreme Court ruling that the Obama administration has warned will imperil minority representation.
The decision to challenge state officials marks an aggressive effort to continue policing voting rights issues and follows a ruling by the court last month that invalidated a critical part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The justices threw out a part of the act that determined which states with a history of discrimination had to be granted Justice Department or court approval before making voting law changes.
In the coming weeks, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is expected to announce that the Justice Department is using other sections of the Voting Rights Act to bring lawsuits or take other legal action to prevent states from implementing certain laws, including requirements to present certain kinds of identification in order to vote. The department is also expected to try to force certain states to get approval, or “pre-clearance,” before they can change their election laws.
“Even as Congress considers updates to the Voting Rights Act in light of the Court’s ruling, we plan, in the meantime, to fully utilize the law’s remaining sections to subject states to pre-clearance as necessary,” Holder said in a speech Thursday morning in Philadelphia. “My colleagues and I are determined to use every tool at our disposal to stand against such discrimination wherever it is found.”
Holder announced that, in a first step, the department will support a lawsuit in Texas that was brought by a coalition of Democratic legislators and civil rights groups against the state’s redistricting plan.
Holder said he is asking a federal judge to require Texas to submit all voting law changes to the Justice Department for approval for a ten-year period because of its history of discrimination.
“It’s a pretty clear sign that a lawsuit against the Texas voter-ID law is also on the way,” said Matthew Miller, a former Justice Department spokesman. Miller said Justice may also sue North Carolina if that state passes a new voter ID law.
Reaction to Holder’s announcement among Republicans in Texas and on Capitol Hill was hostile.
“Texans should not – and will not – stand for the continued bullying of our state by the Obama administration,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tx), in a statement.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) called Holder’s actions an “end-run” around the Supreme Court.
“Once again, the Obama administration is demonstrating utter contempt for our country’s system of checks and balances, not to mention the U.S. Constitution,” said Perry, in a statement. “This end-run around the Supreme Court undermines the will of the people of Texas, and casts unfair aspersions on our state’s common-sense efforts to preserve the integrity of our elections process.”
The Obama administration had opposed the Texas voter-ID law signed in 2011 by Perry (R), saying it endangered minority voting rights. Texas was one of eight states that passed voter-ID laws.
Supporters of the measures, which were signed by seven Republican governors and one independent, said that requiring voters to show specific photo IDs would prevent voter fraud. But critics of the laws said that they could hurt turnout among minority voters and others.
Because of Texas’s history of discrimination, the voter-ID law had to be cleared by the Justice Department. The department blocked the law, saying it would endanger minority voting rights. Texas sued the Justice Department, leading to a week-long trial last summer.
Last August, the U.S. District Court in Washington blocked the law from going into effect, ruling that the legislation would impose “strict, unforgiving burdens” on poor, minority voters.
But just hours after the recent Supreme Court’s Voting Rights Act ruling, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said Texas would move forward with its voter-ID law and would also carry out redistricting changes that had been mired in court battles.
In North Carolina, the Republican legislature is set to pass one of the strictest voting laws in the country that voting rights advocates say will hurt minority voters because the law will make it harder to register and vote.
Holder hinted at the Justice Department’s voting rights strategy a week ago at the annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Orlando when he sharply criticized the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Voting Rights Act.
“Let me be clear,” Holder said in a speech. “This was a deeply disappointing and flawed decision. It dealt a serious setback to the cause of voting rights . . . And this is why protecting the fundamental right to vote — for all Americans — will continue to be a top priority for the Department of Justice so long as I have the privilege of serving as attorney general.”
The court did not strike down the law itself or the provision that calls for special scrutiny of states with a history of discrimination. But it said that Congress has to come up with a new formula based on current data to determine which states should be subject to the requirements.
Texas is the largest state that was covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires federal approval of any voting changes in states with a history of discrimination. The act also covers Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Virginia, Alaska, Arizona and parts of seven other states, including North Carolina.
Proponents of the law said it would be nearly impossible for a Congress bitterly divided along partisan lines to reach an agreement on a new formula to decide which states must bring any changes in their voting laws to the Justice Department or federal judges for approval.
In his Orlando speech, Holder said that the Justice Department would not wait for Congress to act. Instead, he said, the department would shift resources in its civil rights division to focus on provisions of the act that were not affected by the court’s ruling, including Section 2, which prohibits voting discrimination based on race, color or language.
In the Texas redistricting case, last year a federal court in Washington examined the state’s 2011 plan under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. A three-judge special blocked the plan and did not allow the redistricting maps to go into effect, saying they undermine the political clout of minorities who are responsible for the state’s population growth.
Another lawsuit on the same maps was filed in U.S. District Court in San Antonio where several groups, including the Mexican American Legislative Caucus and the Texas Latino Redistricting Task Force sued Texas and Perry.
“The 2011 maps fail to reflect Latino growth in Texas and, even in some places, are intentionally racially discriminatory,” said Nina Perales, vice president for litigation for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
Holder’s action Thursday, under Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act, supports the plaintiffs in the lawsuit brought in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas. The Justice Department is asking the judge to require Texas to submit all voting law changes to the attorney general for approval.

Robert Barnes contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/justice-department-to-challenge-states-voting-rights-laws/2013/07/25/c26740b2-f49b-11e2-a2f1-a7acf9bd5d3a_story.html?wpisrc=nl_pmpol

Areas covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act

Updated: June 25, 2013

The Supreme Court has ruled that Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional. Section 4 is the basis for which jurisdictions covered in Section 5 are selected. Now, lawmakers must update the formula used for selecting jurisdictions.

Section 5 required nine states, including Alaska, and individual jurisdictions around the country to get federal approval before changing voting or election laws to ensure they do not have a harmful impact on minority voters. Read the latest updates.