Voter's Death The Deciding Factor In Election

[matcom]

<snip>

OCILLA, Ga. -- Every last vote counts -- even if it's the voter's last vote.

A city council race in south Georgia was thrown into a runoff by the absentee ballot of a woman who died on election day -- and not the night before, as officials first believed.

Election officials initially said Tyrone Smith defeated Allan Smith 65-64 in Tuesday's election. But one of the absentee ballots was rejected because poll workers thought the voter had died Monday night. They later learned that she died after the polls opened.

"We had marked the ballot 'rejected, deceased,"' elections superintendent Frances Bradford said Wednesday. "The registrar, Mary Denney, had said something about how it would have been a tie when we were counting, and then after we went home I started thinking, 'How does the code read?"'

http://www.boston.com/news/odd/articles/2003/11/06/voters_death_the_deciding_factor_in_election/