Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Seventeen months after FAUX News Fraudcasting became fixated on Republican
claims that hundreds of dead voters had cast ballots in South Carolina,
those allegations have now been completely debunked by an investigation by
law enforcement that found no evidence of voter fraud. Medfia Matters reports, Another Fox Voter Fraud Story Dies:
Fox frequently pushes dubious allegations of widespread voter fraud that fall apart under scrutiny.
The South Carolina "dead voter" claim
sprang from testimony from Kevin Schwedo, the director of the state's
Department of Motor Vehicles, who said on January 11, 2012, that more
than 950 residents were recorded as having cast a vote after their
reported death date. Schwedo made clear
that this could have been the result of data errors or voters dying
after casting an absentee ballot, but the state's Republicans, led by
Attorney General Alan Wilson, seized on the report as evidence of
widespread voter fraud.
Wilson took his campaign to Fox News, where he received a platform for softball interviews from several anchors. The network used the "dead voter" story to promote South Carolina's voter ID law, which had been blocked by the Justice Department.
Again, these claims were always dubious – deceased voter fraud claims are often revealed as unfounded, the result of data errors or other explanations.
Indeed, on July 3 the public release
of an investigation by the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division
(SLED) provided the answer we anticipated: No voter fraud was found, no
charges filed. As of noon E.T. on July 8, Fox had not reported on those
findings.
According to the report, released due to a public records search by the Columbia Free Times'
Corey Hutchins, SLED reviewed the findings of the State Election
Commission, which had looked into the 207 votes that had been called
into question that occurred during the 2010 general election. Nearly
half were the result of "name recognition errors," where, for instance,
when a father who was deceased but whose name still appeared on the list
would be marked as having voted when his son of the same name had
actually cast the ballot. The balance was due to other types of clerical
errors and individuals casting absentee ballots before their deaths.
In other words, the results of the investigation were exactly what
someone versed in the issue would have anticipated, and in fact what
local officials postulated at the time. But Fox News, driven by
ideology, tried to turn it into a voter fraud issue.
The Columbia Free Times' Corey Hutchins explained the result of this effort by the GOP and right-wing media — which he labeled the state's biggest waste of public funds
for 2012– was that the investigation "hammer[ed] away at the time and
resources of the understaffed and underfunded State Election Commission
– even when that agency has repeatedly said there are no documented
cases of someone impersonating another at the polls in the Palmetto
State."
The only scandal here is the illegal GOPropaganda perpetrated by FAUX News Fraudcasting. No one should consider FAUX News a legitimate news organization.