Op-Ed: What's Worse Than Dead People Voting?
While I am sure that it is difficult to keep up with all the deaths in the populace and the names on voter rolls, it seems that since both of these are registered with the government, in this day and age of computers these systems could be coupled together and communicated to remove deceased voters from voter rolls. However, that is not the case.
North Carolina had nearly 8,000 deceased voters on the rolls in 2020, with some having been dead for nearly 25 years. A woman who died in 2003 remained active on the state’s voter rolls for two decades.
When complaints in Pennsylvania were made, 95,000 dead voters were removed in 2019, 91,000 in 2018 and 103,000 in 2017. Even after all of this, there are presently complaints of at least 21,000 dead people still on the voter rolls. My question to this particular state is, “How long did Ben Franklin get to vote?”
Then there is Michigan, which is currently going to court because the secretary of state refuses to remove 26,000 dead people from the voter rolls. After all, every vote must be counted! Right?
Well, what could be worse than having dead people on the voter registration rolls? How about having dead people on the ballot!
In the midterm elections, the Democrats ran a dead person in a Pennsylvania state House race. Did this person die the night before the election? The answer is no. He had been dead a month, and yet his name was still on the ballot.
In fact, there are numerous cases of dead people being on the ballot, both Republicans and Democrats. Now, I could wrong, and not meaning any disrespect to the deceased, but it seems to me that one of the criteria for running for an elected office should be that the candidate has to be alive.
So what could be worse than having dead people on the voter rolls and on the ballot? How about having dead people winning elections!
A 2014 article in The Washington Post speaks to five people winning election to Congress even though they were dead at the time of their election. Another article speaks to five more dead politicians elected to various offices, including two mayors, two state senators and one member of Congress. Last week in Pennsylvania, the deceased Democratic candidate was re-elected in a landslide, taking 85 percent of the vote!
I found all of this without an exhaustive search, but the question that arose in my mind helped me think of something that I might be missing here. The question is, “How many dead people voted for dead candidates?” That’s kind of a spooky thought.
My daughter suggested that they might have more common ground — like six feet. But perhaps we should just back up Election Day to Halloween, Oct. 31, for then you could dress up like your favorite candidate, and the thoughts of dead people voting and dead candidates running wouldn’t seem quite so scary.
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