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After South Carolina enacted a law requiring voters to show ID at the polls, the U.S. Justice Department asked for data on the number of voters who would be affected – and so, of course, did reporters. The state handed out some top-line numbers and a number of South Carolina news outlets, including the AP, produced spot stories.
But Columbia’s Jim Davenport wasn’t satisfied: The numbers lacked the racial and geographic detail he was looking for. And his dissatisfaction only grew when he determined the state hadn’t even provided all the information the Justice Department wanted. The department had asked for registered voters affected by the law, but the state delivered data only on active voters, leaving out about 74,000 people.
When Davenport asked for additional information, all state officials provided was a link to each county’s data. Pressed for more, they delayed for a week. So Davenport got to work. Frustrated but determined, he began extracting the racial, age and gender details for voters without state-issued photo IDs himself from the Election Commission's website – cutting and pasting three files for each of 46 counties into an Excel spreadsheet.
Proponents of such ID laws argue the measures are needed to prevent fraudulent voting. But opponents say that, intentionally or not, they squelch voting among non-whites and the poor, who largely vote Democratic.
Davenport’s spreadsheet showed that latter was true in South Carolina. He determined that the law would disproportionately affect minority voters across the state – for example, nearly half the voters who cast ballots at a historically black college in Columbia lack state-issued photo identification as the measure requires.
The state Democratic Party chairman called it “electoral genocide,” and a spokesman for the Election Commission acknowledged the state has some serious work to do before the next election.
http://www.heraldonline.com/2011/10/18/3451962/apnewsbreak-sc-voter-id-law-hits.html
Davenport estimates it took two work shifts to crunch the data, and half a shift to write the story.
Unable to match his research, members across South Carolina used the AP story, with the state’s two largest papers -- Columbia and Charleston -- featuring it on A1. It also played nationally, causing ripples in the political world. Pundit Keith Olbermann put it in his “worsts,” tweeting, in part: “AP proves racism in So. Carolina Voter ID law.” A Republican strategist in South Carolina tweeted that Davenport’s story proved why the voter ID law was needed. And MSNBC’s morning show devoted an entire segment to the story, with quote boxes on the screen displaying AP’s text.
For refusing to take insufficient data from state officials and digging deep to find the real story in a matter of days, this week’s Best of the States $300 prize goes to Columbia statehouse reporter Jim Davenport.
Kristin Gazlay