Dead Voters Are Recognized

Special Report - September 5, 2012
Last week, a group committed to ensuring fair and free elections submitted a list to the State Board of Elections of nearly 30,000 names of deceased voters in North Carolina who still appear on the state’s voter rolls. The Voter Integrity Project (VIP) compared lists of names of deceased residents from the N.C. Division of Public Health with public voter registration data from the N.C. State Board of Elections (SBOE) website in a new report. The group looked at the names of voters who died between January 2002 and March 2012, according to an August 30 press release.

The VIP has not completed its audit of all the 6.3 million registered voter names and 750,000 deceased names. In particular, “the group is still analyzing the actual cases of deceased persons who may have had votes cast in their names after having already died.” The report’s progress has also been slowed by the classification of many deaths as “out-of-state,” meaning they are considered “unofficial.”

In response to the group’s research as presented to the SBOE, the Wake County Board of Elections has reportedly installed “software that will allow updates of the Wake County voter roll as soon as the Register of Deeds receives a Death Certificate.” In working on the project, VIP also “learned that some county election boards were minimizing the number of deceased voters on their roll by cross checking with other county offices,” a practice that has since been instituted statewide.

Related resources:
Voter Resources Available - August 14, 2012
Voter Registration Kit - 2012
2012 Primary Runoff Results - July 18, 2012
2012 Primary Highlights - May 10, 2012
NCFPC Releases Primary Voter Guide - April 17, 2012

Copyright © 2012. North Carolina Family Policy Council. All rights reserved.