Fact-Checker: Alan Wilson's Claims About Zombie Voters are 'Whoppers'

The fact-checking arm of The Washington Post released a report on Thursday that took Attorney General Alan Wilson to task for his handling of the so-called "zombie voters" in South Carolina.

It gave him four Pinocchios--the worst possible score--calling his statements "whoppers."

Wilson appeared on Fox News in January 2012 and said, "We know for a fact that there are deceased people whose identities are being used in elections in South Carolina.”

But a subsequent investigation by SLED (report attached), revealed that there were no such voters. They were result of "clerical errors or mistaken identities."

The Post's story explains the circumstances of how identities can be confused in detail here.

The possibility of zombie voters was one of the justifications used to pass voter ID legislation, an effort that will cost the state approximately $10 million. A report in The Rock Hill Herald estimated implementation of the laws over the next 10 years will cost $6.5 million and a story in The State said lawyers fees associated with arguing the legislation in federal court will cost about $3.5 million.

The Post also criticized the timing of the release of SLED's report, noting that it came the day before the 4th of July and only due to a Freedom of Information Act request by Columbia Free Times reporter Corey Hutchins. 

Democrats took the occasion of the Post's story to criticize Gov. Nikki Haley's handling of the issue. Kristin Sosanie, Communication Director for the SCDP told Patch, “The SLED investigation and now this fact check prove that the fear-mongering over zombie voters and subsequent voter ID push read like most other pieces of Governor Haley’s record: wasteful, politically motivated, costly, and without a hope of helping middle-class families in South Carolina in any real way. South Carolina deserves better than Haley’s secretive, incompetent and broken state government.” 

But Haley's spokesperson Rob Godfrey pointed out that she never stated there was an epidemic of dead voters and only advocated for voter ID as a way of insuring the integrity of elections.

Wilson's office declined additional comment on the matter.

Read the entire Washington Post story here.