To Keyssar’s point, a recent investigation into South Carolina’s 2012 elections concluded that no fraud in the name of dead people had happened, despite widespread claims of by state party officials of “zombie voting.” As legislators were pushing a voter i.d. law, several said they knew “for a fact” that hundreds of dead people’s identities were being stolen to vote in South Carolina. Rep. Alan Clemmons, the chief supporter of the photo ID law, declared that, “We must have certainty in South Carolina that zombies aren’t voting.”
But a 13-month statewide investigation found that not one “dead person” had voted and that all of the rest of the zombies voting were really just aberrations caused by all-too-human clerical errors. Just one person in the investigation has cast an absentee ballot, but died before the election.
The good news for that dead voter: If you vote absentee in South Carolina before you die, under state law your vote, dead person, still counts.