News 14 Carolina - Political Connections

Dead people voting??? State Auditor Les Merritt (a Republican) says he thought he was doing the right thing when he asked lawmakers to hold off on approving a bill to allow registration and voting at one stop absentee sites on the same day.

He says he's been investigating the voter rolls since January and reports are he found 1600+ dead people voting, 600+ invalid social security numbers and 25,000+ invalid drivers licenses. He says he just wanted lawmakers to know about it in case they needed the information for debate.

Two problems-he did it just 30 minutes before the vote and his report is not complete and did not ask the Board of Elections for help.

The result was a scolding by lawmakers. The committee room was extremely packed and audience members included the Democratic party chair Jerry Meek who called Merritt incompetent.

The State BOE says they have verified all the claims of voter fraud and they are all resolved. The dead people for the most part registered to vote and did so by absentee but died between that time and election day, according to the BOE.

Merritt was clearly outnumbered and in the end the committee approved the bill again and it will head back to the Senate floor.

Sen. Dan Clodfelter was clearly not pleased that Merritt asked them to pull the bill at the last minute which is unusual to say the least. He was particularly mad that the bill was pulled and Merritt said he had no new information and indicated his final review could result in no evidence of voter fraud.

Most Democrats believe Merritt wanted it pulled because Republicans don't support the bill because Democrats believe the bill will benefit the donkeys in elections.

Oh the partisan politics continues...