If you watched Fox News last month, you might have heard that more than 900 dead people voted in “recent” South Carolina elections. Right-wingers have used this supposed fraud to bolster the case for voter ID laws.

If you read this blog, you might remember me questioning this zombie tale. Perhaps these people weren’t dead, just listed as dead in state records, which everyone admits are in terrible condition. I also wondered what “recent” meant. The last year? The last ten years? It makes a difference when we’re talking about a truly small fraction of the South Carolina electorate. I argued that the solution to this alleged problem was better record keeping, and regular purging of voter rolls, not ID laws that could end up disenfranchising elderly and minority voters.

Well, readers, I learned today through Think Progress, a liberal blog, that although South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson has still not disclosed the identities of all 900 walking-dead, he has provided six names—and it turns out there’s nary a case of grave-digging identity theft.



The State Election Commission reviewed the names, and found the following (this is a direct quotation from their site)

One was an absentee ballot cast by a voter who then died before election day;

Another was the result of an error by a poll worker who mistakenly marked the voter as Samuel Ferguson, Jr. when the voter was in fact Samuel Ferguson, III;

Two were the result of stray marks on the voter registration list detected by the scanner – again, a clerical error;

The final two were the result of poll managers incorrectly marking the name of the voter in question instead of the voter listed either above or below on the list.

The attorney general has only released six names; there are many more. But so far %100 of the alleged fraudulent votes cast were not, in fact, fraudulent votes. I like the odds.