Dusk of the Dead

Zombies.

Reports of their voting have been greatly exaggerated. A lot of places. Particularly in South Carolina, where Republicans insist zombies have photo IDs to vote — the kind any respectable Undead can obtain where they get their driver’s licenses, at the DMV (Dead Men Voting) office.

The Institute for Southern Studies reports on efforts that would — in a sane world — put down the dead men voting zombie lie for good.

As was suspected from the beginning, the fevered stories of “zombie voters” turned out to be fantasy. This week, state elections officials reviewed 207 of the supposed 950 cases of dead people voting, and couldn’t confirm fraud in any of them. 106 stemmed from clerical errors at the polls, and another 56 involved bad data — the usual culprits when claims of dead voters have surfaced in the past.

After claims that hundreds of the walking dead had voted in the Republican primary, the Attorney General released the names of only six to the State Election Commission for review.

By early February, the election officials were able to confirm all of the voters were legitimate: five were very much alive, and one had voted before dying. Clerical errors were blamed.

Even as Fox News pressed ahead with its zombie voter headlines, the State Election Commission pressed ahead with its investigation, reporting its findings this week:

In 197 of [the 207 cases examined], the records show no indication of votes being cast fraudulently in the name of deceased voters. Research found each of these cases to be the result of clerical errors, bad data matching, errors in assigning voter participation, or voters dying after being issued an absentee ballot. In 10 cases, the records were insufficient to make a determination.

Alas, this is not a sane world, and the report was no bullet through the brain for these zombies. The South Carolina Republican Party is — unsurprisingly — undeterred, NPR reports:

The state attorney general’s office in South Carolina said in a statement Thursday afternoon that the question of “dead” voters is still being investigated by the State Law Enforcement Division and that no “final answer to this problem” can be determined until that investigation is concluded.

“To give this state’s election process the clean bill of health we would like, we can’t simply rely on the review of some 200 of 950 records … that is unsatisfactory,” the statement said.

That’s why the GOP insists we need Zombie ID. Because we must be absolutely certain. Because absence of evidence is not evidence of absence where the Voting Dead are concerned. The minority-looking people in line in front of you, all around you at the polls — What’s that BEHIND YOU!  — may seem  normal, but what if they’re not? They might be zombies. If we never looked at things and thought of what might be, why we’d all still be out there in the tall grass with the apes.

(Cross-posted from Scrutiny Hooligans.)