COLUMBIA The S.C. Department of Motor Vehicles director estimates more than 900 dead people may have voted, and his data has been turned over to the State Law Enforcement Division for investigation.

DMV Director Kevin Schwedo testified Wednesday before an S.C. House subcommittee that his staff analyzed the records of more than 239,000 voters who do not have an S.C. driver's license or identification card, and discovered that about 37,000 of them were dead.

Analysts used records from the S.C. Election Commission, the S.C. Department of Vital Statistics and the Social Security Administration, Schwedo said. His office determined that about 957 people could have voted after they had died but said there could be data-reporting problems or other errors that would make the number lower.

Schwedo did not say when those questionable votes may have been cast - whether over the past 20 years or two years. He said he examined the data because he wasn't satisfied with what was being presented by the S.C. State Election Commission.

Schwedo's testimony comes just weeks after the U.S. Department of Justice rejected South Carolina's law. Under the law, people would have to show a state-issued driver's license or ID card, a military ID or a U.S. passport to vote. However, the Justice Department determined the law would discriminate against black voters, who more often do not have a photo ID, and it ruled that the state had done nothing to demonstrate a need for the law.

State Attorney General Alan Wilson announced his intentions to file a lawsuit against the Justice Department. Wilson's office issued a press release Wednesday to say it had requested a SLED investigation of Schwedo's findings.

Rep. Bakari Sellers, D-Bamberg, questioned the timing of Schwedo's presentation, noting that no examples of S.C. voter fraud had been documented previously.

During its research for the Justice Department, the Election Commission determined 239,333 registered voters did not have DMV-issued IDs. Schwedo's agency found the 37,000 deceased people along with another 91,000 whose driver's licenses had been cancelled after the DMV was notified they had obtained licenses in other states.

"When you used dead people to get to 239,000 people, there's problems with the data," Schwedo said. He also said it was not his job to explain why there were more than 900 dead people who appear to have voted after they were reported dead.

Schwedo said he gave Election Commission Director Marci Andino a chance to correct the data and make it public but she and her staff did not cooperate.

However, in a letter written Wednesday to the state Attorney General's office, Andino reported that the number of voters without a DMV-issued ID had been revised to 202,484 people. And she took exception to accusations that her office was inflating the numbers of voters without ID cards. She noted that her office cannot strike people from its voter registration list just because it does not match the DMV's database.

Schwedo insisted he was not playing politics. He said he is only concerned about the issue because his agency has to prepare to issue identification cards to voters who need them.

"I don't give a rat's tail at the end of the day which way this goes," he said.

During questioning, Sellers noted that the new data might actually work toward proving the Justice Department's point about alienating black voters. By shrinking the number of affected people, the pool might have a higher concentration of black voters, thus showing a greater impact from the law on minorities.

Schwedo agreed that might be the case.