Voting IDs, 953 ballots of dead, battle it out in South Carolina

Columbia - South Carolina's attorney general, Republican Alan Wilson, has recently notified the U.S. Justice Department that 953 ballots belonging to dead people were handed over in the South Carolina presidential primary on January 21, 2012.

“In a letter dated Thursday, Wilson says the analysis found 953 ballots cast by voters listed as dead. In 71 percent of those cases, ballots were cast between two months and 76 months after the people died. That means they ‘voted’ up to 6 1/3 years after their death," reported Prison Planet. Who gains from the problem? No fraudulent votes were ever cast. The Republican election official who first released the story said the problem could also be from voters casting absentee ballots before their deaths or by data errors. However, the New Hampshire Union Leader blamed activists getting the ballots as dead people because they were not carrying official IDs. An article in MSNBC reports that "Republicans across the country have engaged in a full-scale attack on the right to vote, seeking ways to restrict or limit voters’ ability to cast their ballots for their own partisan advantage," through the use of forced ID voting cards on the most vulnerable of society. The Union Leader reported that, "...in nine instances, clerks readily handed over ballots after a would-be voter implied he was the city resident, recently deceased, still listed on the voter checklist." Once the anonymous person received the ballot, they would leave without voting. Questionable credibility of the Union Leader Known for its conservative political opinions, the paper was later purchased in the early 1910 by Londonderry. The New Hampshire Union Leader would become owned by the New Hampshire Republican politician, Rosecrans Pillsbury. Throughout their existence, the New Hampshire Sunday News and the Union Leader and the various preceding incarnations of the Union Leader have been closely involved in state politics and during the quadrennial United States Presidential election, national politics. The publishers' political orientations have been conservative and Republican. The owner-publishers have invariably made their opinions known in print, which has frequently prompted harsh criticism and accusations that the paper is used for not-entirely-journalistic purposes, according to Absolute Astronomy. South Carolina has requested the State Law Enforcement Division to investigate potential voter fraud, with Attorney General Alan Wilson sending an analysis by the Department of Motor Vehicles to U.S. Attorney Bill Nettles. NBC Politics at MSNBC stated that "six more states have enacted laws, or strengthened their existing laws, requiring voters to show a form of photo identification such as a driver’s license in order to cast a ballot." Republican-controlled state legislatures and Republican governors in Wisconsin, Kansas and other states have already enacted photo identification laws. Wisconsin and the Voting ID Card One of the primary states with new ID voter card requirements is Wisconsin, which may have a recall election next year against Republican Gov. Scott Walker and his extreme agenda, with over a million signed petitions spearheading the recall.

Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate said the total number of signatures collected to recall Walker represents nearly half, or 46 percent, of the electorate, and is just a few thousand votes shy of the total votes Walker received in his original run for office in 2010, said the UWire website.

Meanwhile, Walker is gathering campaign money in New York City to further pit union busting Republicans against pro-labor Democrats, and anyone else who is against him. Alternet states that, "When the actual recall election is held, as most political observers believe that it eventually will be, the nation will see the real-life impact of Wisconsin’s tougher new voter ID laws, which were adopted, as in many GOP-led states, to complicate access to voting for some traditional Democratic voter blocks. " Project Veritas polling video On January 11, 2012, Project Veritas sent a team of investigators into polling places with a list of deceased voters to see if they would be permitted to vote. Not a new name, undercover investigations by Project Veritas have made the news in its Medicaid Investigation, the Ivory Tower media world, to Catch a Journalist, Occupy Wall Street, and Teachers Union Gone Wild. According to Wikipedia, James E. O'Keefe III (born June 28, 1984) is a conservative American activist who has produced audio and video recordings of staged encounters with public figures and workers in a variety of organizations, purportedly showing abusive or illegal behavior by representatives of those organizations.

White House Photo by Pete Souza

President Barack Obama delivers remarks on Medicaid fraud and health care reform at St. Charles High School in St. Charles, Missouri, March 10, 2010.

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He gained national attention for his release of video recordings of workers at ACORN offices in 2009, his arrest in early 2010 at the office of Senator Mary Landrieu in a failed attempt to record staff conversations, and release of videos of NPR executives in 2011.

Investigations by both legal authorities and journalists have found O'Keefe has "selectively", "heavily" or "deceptively" edited secretly recorded videos to leave a false impression and present the subjects in the worst possible light. Regarding Project Veritas's voter fraud video at the top of this article, the New Hampshire League of Women Voters have called on the" state Attorney General's Office for a full-scale prosecution of 'out-of-state con artists' for allegedly falsely claiming to be recently deceased New Hampshire residents to obtain their ballots during Tuesday's presidential primary. “The fraud shown on the video was carefully manufactured to make it appear that New Hampshire doesn't have a system of checks and balances in place to protect our votes. That is not the case,” the New Hampshire League of Women Voters said in a statement. The league is a long-standing, non-partisan civic organization.

New Hampshire Democratic Party spokesman Harrell Kirstein also condemned attempts by “GOP operatives” for “manufacturing” voter fraud to “gin up support for a discriminatory voter ID law. (Union Leader)