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Thousands of Deceased on State Voter Roll
State Board of Elections identified more than 10,000 deceased on state's voter rolls.
Election 2012
Virginia's Board of Elections identified 10,000 deceased voters on its rolls; more than 1,000 of those were in Fairfax County.
James Cullum
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When the Virginia State Board of Elections recently identified more than 10,000 deceased voters on state rolls, more than 10 percent of those were from Fairfax County, according to Cameron Quinn, the county's chief elections officer.
In all, the state identified 1,038 dead voters on Fairfax County voting rolls, Quinn told Patch Thursday.
The county is continually working to remove deceased voters from the rolls, she said. Since Jan. 1, the county removed 2,812 deceased voters from the rolls, Quinn said.
On a monthly or so basis, the State Board of Elections sends the county what appear to be deceased voters based on a state level match of the Virginia Department of Health’s Division of Vital Statistics’ list and the voter registration list, according to Quinn, "which we then investigate and remove."
"We always send a letter regarding the cancellation, just in case there is an error in what was provided us," she said. "Also, if on Election Day we get a spouse reporting a death, and they attest to it on a form we provide the polling place, we will also remove based on that attestation."
Of those 2,812 removed by the county so far this year, some of those — about 100 — were among the 1,038 batch of deceased voters recently identified by the state board, she said. They are now reviewing and processing that list as well.
"We have not finished and gone through and taken them all off yet," she said. "We don't just hit a button and 'poof' they're all gone."
The State Board of Elections' latest list of 10,000 came about when they compared a list of deceased from the Social Security Administration's death master file against voting rolls in Virginia.
Local registrars across the state are now in the process of removing the names they received from the state board.
Secretary of the State Board of Elections Don Palmer was encouraged by these efforts: “Virginia is committed to ensuring only eligible voters are registered to vote. The State Board of Elections’ efforts in utilizing the death master file has yielded significant results with the identification of over 10,000 deceased individuals contained in the voter rolls. Virginia will continue to work to ensure those deceased or ineligible to vote are removed timely from the voter rolls.”
The general election is Nov. 6.
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keith mahone
10:58 am on Friday, August 10, 2012
I don't think these names should be purged from the roles. That would be voter intimidation and racism, like a poll tax - only worse. You see, if just one of those people reputed to be deceased is still living, that will force "African - Americans" to stay away from the polls in droves for fear they'll be mistaken for dead people. And that's no mere civil rights issue; it's how Republicans (Capitalists, Patriots, Christians, etc.) get elected.
The BSD Guy
1:59 pm on Friday, August 10, 2012
Golly jeepers, Keith. sounds like you're a really good "Christian" by expressing your direct contempt for "African - Americans". The Lord according to Keith:
"Love your brother, except for the people Keith doesn't like."
As a Christian, I would appreciate it if you radical right wing pseudo religious hypesters quick pretending that YOU"RE the Christians that represent America. Religion is supposed to give meaning to ones life, not used as a tool to justify two bit bigotry, hate, and contempt, or steal from others and call it "free market capitalism."
reston on my laurels
4:34 pm on Friday, August 10, 2012
Alrighty then.
::hands Keith a tin foil hat::
Tony Jordan
11:43 am on Friday, August 10, 2012
What happens if you show up at your polling place with your identification and voter ID and they tell you your name has been removed from the list of registered voters because you died?
John Farrell
9:22 am on Saturday, August 11, 2012
Any voter that the General Registrar intends to remove from the poll books is supposed to receive a letter from her and has the opportunity to object to their removal.
Be vigilant as to any correspondence from the Electoral Office.
Stella McEnearny
12:32 pm on Friday, August 10, 2012
I guess they were just dying to vote...
Tammi Petrine
1:18 pm on Friday, August 10, 2012
I am far more interested to know how many DEAD persons have voted in the past... IF this is not happening, why all the efforts accross our country to purge the rolls? Efforts to purge voters because of supposed fraud is a huge waste of time, resources and attention to what should be an effort to register as many legitimate voters as possible. We are after all a democracy, are we not?
The BSD Guy
2:07 pm on Friday, August 10, 2012
The Republicans are trying to rig the election and all elections. They recognize that a lot of elections are always reasonably close ( less than 10%) and by eliminating as much opposition as they can, they hope to essentially steal what they haven't rightly earned. The pseudo-religious radical right wingers apparently see the ability to steal, manipulate, or rig an election as a virtue, not a sin.
The Republicans are trying to destroy this country by turning the government into something that more closely resembles Junta style government that you used to see in South America back in the '50s and '60s.
Robert Beale
2:37 pm on Saturday, August 11, 2012
Amend. How many of these dead people "voted?" When I vote two people record my name. Time for the State Board of Elections to the home work before releasing half-hatched news.
Kathy Keith
3:05 pm on Friday, August 10, 2012
One fraudulent vote takes away a valid vote. Therefore ANY voter fraud is a problem.
Voter fraud is a problem--look at upper New York state, Minnesota, Greene County, Alabama, and other places.
Laurie Dodd
8:40 pm on Friday, August 10, 2012
I wonder what facts you have to back up your claims about voter fraud. I researched Greene County, Alabama, and found that a mistrial was declared in a 1985 trial alleging voter fraud, yet the Heritage Foundation and others continue to claim that these decades-old unproven allegations require that measures be taken to purge voting rolls. That is not sufficient evidence of a problem, in my book. If you have further documentation that voter fraud is a serious problem, I would be interested.
http://www.nytimes.com/1985/09/15/us/mistrail-declared-in-alabama-voting-fraud.html
Laurie Dodd
9:09 pm on Friday, August 10, 2012
Attempts to verify claims of voter fraud in Minnesota have been inconclusive: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/polinaut/archive/2011/10/poligraph_voter.shtml.
The documented invalid votes were from 113 felons; some had not done the paperwork to re-establish their voting eligibility, and others would not have eligible in any case. Asking these individuals to produce a photo ID would not have made any difference. Neither would purging the rolls of dead voters. There was no evidence of an organized campaign of voter fraud, just individuals who should not have been allowed to vote. We do not know which candidates these people voted for, nor whether these votes would have made any difference in the election, though it was unusually close. Again, this is not enough to demonstrate that voter fraud is a substantial problem.
John Farrell
9:05 am on Saturday, August 11, 2012
There are 1.1 million people in Fairfax and 715,000 voters. For there to be 900+ recently deceased persons on the voting rolls is not remarkable or newsworthy. It's 0.000818 percent of the population and 0.0001258 percent of the registered voters.
Why would such a mundane event warrant a Patch story?
Oh, I see. SBE issued a press release, therefore, it must be important.
The State Board of Elections is a partisan operation controlled by the Governor's party. The narrative of that crowd is that voter fraud is rampant (when, in fact, it's nonexistent) and extraordinary steps must be taken to prevent it.
Actually, that bunch is attempting to engage in voter suppression and passed 8 laws this past session advancing that agenda because they know that if every eligible citizen votes, they lose.
You're being played Ms. Barton.
The Analyst
2:42 pm on Saturday, August 11, 2012
The only way anyone could succeed at voter fraud would actually be to generate counterfeit ballots (paper) or alter electronic tally systems. The notion that there are "ka-billions" of unregistered and illegal voters out there just waiting to "trick" the system is idiotic and preposterous. It would require this "vast army" of tricksters to constantly be showing up at one polling station an moving onto the next. To have a significant difference, it would likely take tens of thousands or perhaps hundreds of thousands of people essentially working in complete synchronization with one another. ....and there are people out there that really think this is a threat? To them I ask, "What about the illegal space aliens?"
This is a stupid waste of taxpayer money by the Repubicans, who can't find anything better to do with their time and our tax dollars than waste it trying to make sure they don't lose an election. What a bunch of losers!