Consider the following examples of supposedly “dead voters,” courtesy of the Brennan Center for Justice:
Georgia: In 1998, Georgia investigators pointed to a vote cast by Alan J. Mandel, despite his death the year prior. When officials looked into the matter, according to the Washington Post, they realized that the votes had been cast by Alan J. Mandell (with two L’s), a man still very much alive, and poll workers had simply marked off the wrong name.
California: When Michael Huffington lost to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) in the 1994 Senate race, he contested his defeat by alleging voter fraud, including supposed votes cast by dead people. According to Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Lou Cannon, “A check by voting registrars in two populous counties (Alameda and Fresno) found that this claim was based on clerical errors in which voters signed their names on the wrong lines.”
Maryland: An investigation into a claim that 89 dead Marylanders had voted in the 1994 election proved spurious when FBI officials were unable to find any such cases. According to Timothy P. McNally, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Maryland-Delaware field office, the closest evidence they came to finding fraud was when they “found one person who had voted then died a week after the election.”
New Hampshire: Following allegations that dead people had voted in New Hampshire’s 2004 general election, a subsequent investigation turned up little evidence. When officials sent postcards to the homes of possible “dead voters,” only one was returned as undeliverable; the woman in question died after Election Day but before she received the postcard.
