I’m listening to Dylan Ratigan say silly things on TV about electoral reform on MSNBC. It’s sad.
Should we be really freaked out that there are ‘millions’ of dead people on the voting rolls nationwide?
Does anyone imagine that when you die the coroner or the hospital contacts the board of canvassers in your state? What if you don’t die in the town you live in? What if you’re out of state? Mailing lists also have dead people on them. People die. We don’t have a universal citizenship computer that takes you off every list when you die. The big reason that these things don’t happen is that there is huge resistance to at all federalizing the voting process.
If there was any evidence at all that a trailing number of deceased people on voting rolls was helping anyone commit vote fraud this might be an issue. Since there’s no evidence of this, it’s really not a big thing to get up in arms about.
If you want perfect voting rolls that don’t include dead people and doesn’t remove people because they have the same name as someone who died, then federalize the system, tie it to the Social Security cards. Or invest a vast amount of money in keeping them pristine without purging them of real voters. Otherwise, shut up.
