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No ID? No Problem … You Can Still Vote In SC

“Reasonable impediments …”

No identification?  No problem … you can still vote in South Carolina.

Wait … didn’t the Palmetto State pass a voter identification law several years ago?  Yes … but that law is full of loopholes.

If you fail to bring your ID with you to the polls, all you have to do is claim a disability, illness, work conflict, transportation issue, family responsibility or … our personal favorite … “a religious objection to being photographed.”

Cite any of these “acceptable” excuses and your ballot counts …

Translation?  Fake it till you make it … into the voting booth.

According to the South Carolina law (§ 7-13-710) , these are among the “reasonable impediment” exemptions available to would-be voters who show up at the polls without their photo identification.

The exemptions are rarely used, election officials tell us, but they were touted on the front page of The (Columbia, S.C.) State newspaper this election day …

(Click to view)

(Via: Provided)

Talk about an invitation to fraud …

This news outlet previously opposed voter identification laws.  We objected to the high costs associated with them, and we failed to see the point in combating what we termed the “imaginary menace” of voter fraud.

We were wrong …

In recent years, we have becoming increasingly concerned with the integrity of elections in our nation … and the very first step in safeguarding electoral integrity is to ensure that only those who are registered to vote actually cast ballots.

The next step?  Moving to a system of paper-based ballots which are marked and then hand-fed into tabulators … which in turn spit out printed receipts for the voter, enabling them to confirm their choices and preserve a record of their votes.

Expensive?  Probably … but voting is a core function of government, one that must be performed with absolute accuracy and complete security.

That isn’t happening right now in America, and that’s a huge problem …

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“There are tons of things wrong with America right now, and it’s anybody’s guess whether those things can be fixed given the dysfunction of our current system,” we wrote last summer.  “But a good first step would be to ensure that votes are cast and counted in accordance with the law.”

Concerns over electoral integrity are why we’ve supported U.S. president Donald Trump’s formation of a commission to investigate electoral integrity across the country.  Trump’s Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity seeks to collect voter data and other information from the states in an effort to “fully analyze vulnerabilities and issues related to voter registration and voting.”

We have encouraged all states to participate in that effort, including our own …

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