Who’s going to be the next U.S. president? Nineteen thousand registered voters in Virginia might have something to say about that — if not for the fact that they’re dead.
The state released a notice last week concerning a Virginia Department of Elections (ELECT) update. Integral to an improvement initiative, the department is making multiple changes to its “current operations, spurred by both feedback from the field as well as internal evaluations of existing processes.”
As part of the upgrade, ELECT has “streamlined the reporting of voters who are known to be deceased.” Going forward, family members will be able to report the death of a relative directly to their general registrar. And a national database will allow registrars to verify deaths out of state.
Previously, “general registrars experienced difficulties confirming the death of Virginia voters who died in out-of-state hospitals or facilities.”
The change seems especially important, given a major Department of Elections confession. Apparently, administrators haven’t been sticklers for accuracy.
From WTOP:
As Virginia election officials work to clean up the state’s voter rolls, they announced the discovery of a huge number of dead people still listed as registered voters in the state.
After reviewing death records…they found 18,990 deceased voters who had not been removed.
“I knew that there was something there,” Department of Elections Commissioner Susan Beals told the outlet, “but I didn’t know that it was this big.”
The review’s findings went as far back as 1960. Susan calls the gaffe “a computer coding error that missed between the date of the death being reported and the date of the death certificate.” As for the new system, she and colleagues “want to make sure that the data [they] put into that system is as up to date as it can possibly be.”
It would certainly be nice if only those who are alive could vote. Perhaps it would lessen concerns that American voting is in a state south of perfect integrity.
You may recall these stories:
US Government Cybersecurity Agency Releases Warning About Dominion Voting Machines
Election Integrity Watchdog Files Lawsuits Over Millions of Cases of Voter Registration Fraud
LA County Election Worker Data Was Stored on Servers in China; Software Exec Arrested
Elections always make for hot headlines:
Florida Sheriff Warns New Left-Wing Residents Not to ‘Vote the Stupid Way You Did up North’
Law Professor Calls for All Black Votes to Be Double-Counted From Now On
Virginia’s situation brings to mind the case of Cody Tims. From my coverage nearly three years ago:
In July, Cody received his voter registration form in the mail. That’s all well and good, but the Atlanta resident may have a hard time filling it out — he’s dead.
And not recently — Mr. Tims passed, regrettably, 12 years ago. But even if he were up and around, he’d likely care little whether Trump triumphs or Joe ends up jubilant. Cody, after all, was — and, out of respect, I’ll say is — a cat.
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