Dead voters on rolls, other glitches found in 6 key states

[Jon8503]

By Geoff Dougherty, Tribune staff reporter. Tribune staff reporter Sarah Frank contributed to this report from Washington
Published December 4, 2004

Michel Pillet died in 2002, but his name lives on at the University of New Mexico. He created the school's graduate architecture program and directed it for years. Pillet's name lives on in another way too. He's still listed as a registered voter in New Mexico, even though election officials are required to purge the names of deceased voters. A Tribune analysis of voter records suggests that more than 5,000 dead people remained on the rolls on Election Day in New Mexico. The presidential election there was decided by 6,000 votes.

And New Mexico is not alone. The Tribune's review of voter data there and in five other key states--Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Michigan and Minnesota--found widespread flaws in the integrity of voter rolls.

More than 181,000 dead people were listed on the rolls in the six swing states, despite efforts to clean up the country's voting system after the 2000 election. Thousands more voters were registered to vote in two places, which could have allowed them to cast more than one ballot. Further, more than 90,000 voters in Ohio cast ballots without a valid presidential choice. Either they decided not to choose a candidate, the machine failed to register their choice, or they mistakenly voted for more than one candidate. And the FBI is investigating allegations that Republicans in Florida mounted a large-scale campaign to tamper with ballots.

Those developments come after an election that most observers agree was a vast improvement over the 2000 vote. Data on which voters cast ballots in the November election are not available in some key states as they await county compilations. So it's unclear whether any people registered in two places voted more than once. Likewise, it's impossible to tell whether ballots were cast in the names of the deceased voters on the rolls. But the number of voters who should have been removed from the rolls and were not is considered cause for concern, especially in states where the presidential election was decided by just a few thousand votes. "The problem of bloated registration rolls is a serious problem," said Dan Seligson, editor of electionline.org, a voting reform clearinghouse.

Legislation passed after the 2000 election was designed to fix some of those problems by requiring states to maintain better registration data. But those requirements take effect in 2006.

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