Much has been said in recent years regarding election ballots and voters. While several states capitalize on fraud and deception, others attempt to protect their voters by removing errors and ways to break the law. Virginia is trying to protect each legal vote cast. To accomplish this, the governor removes all dead people from the ballots.
This week, Virginia Department of Elections Commissioner Susan Beals announced that nearly 19,000 dead registrants were recently discovered on the state’s voter rolls.
What Is Happening
What comes out frequently is that more votes were cast in a particular election than people living there. How can this be? The dead voters were found after officials viewed death records from the Virginia Department of HealthThese records dated back to 1960. Consequently, the dead registrants were removed, and Virginia election officials will use a new set of protocols to remove dead registrants from voter rolls in the future more quickly.
Response
Beals reported,
Maintaining the accuracy and security of our voter list continues to be a top priority for ELECT as the agency transitions to the new statewide voter registration system [1].
As part of the new procedures, family members of dead registrants can report the death of their loved ones to their local registrar. This local registrar will then be allowed to use obituaries to confirm the death. Registrars will also be able to search for the death of a registrant in Virginia through a national database.
Why Now?
In 2020, preceding the presidential election, the Public Interest Legal Foundation filed a court brief reporting nearly 12,000 dead registrants on Virginia’s voter rolls. Governor Youngkin is trying to eliminate dead voters in the future.
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Notes:
- ^ {{Youngkin Officials to Remove 19K Dead People from Virginia Voter Rolls}} (go back ↩)
