By From Staff Reports
Published April 22nd 2008 in The Hartford Courant
Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz asked state election officials Monday to investigate the failure of local officials to purge the names of long-dead residents from voter rolls.
Bysiewicz was responding to an investigation by University of Connecticut journalism students, who found the names of 8,500 dead still listed as registered voters, including a Hamden woman who died in 1979.
Three hundred dead voters were recorded as casting votes in elections since 1994, but the UConn study published Sunday by The Courant found no evidence of fraud.
Instead, Bysiewicz said Monday, dead voters apparently were checked off as voting as a result of clerical errors, not an effort to illegally cast votes.
"The good news is there is no evidence of voter fraud," Bysiewicz said.
But the UConn findings showed that existing safeguards failed to work in at least 40 towns.
State law requires town clerks to notify registrars of voters every month of the deaths of residents older than 17. Registrars also conduct an annual canvass by mail to see whether voters still are local residents.
Joseph Camposeo, the president of the town clerks association, said in many cases voters die in an out-of-town nursing home, so the local clerk has no record of the deaths.
Bysiewicz filed a complaint with the state elections enforcement commission and also asked state public health officials for help checking a voter registration list against a state registry of deaths.
Bysiewicz was responding to an investigation by University of Connecticut journalism students, who found the names of 8,500 dead still listed as registered voters, including a Hamden woman who died in 1979.
Three hundred dead voters were recorded as casting votes in elections since 1994, but the UConn study published Sunday by The Courant found no evidence of fraud.
Instead, Bysiewicz said Monday, dead voters apparently were checked off as voting as a result of clerical errors, not an effort to illegally cast votes.
"The good news is there is no evidence of voter fraud," Bysiewicz said.
But the UConn findings showed that existing safeguards failed to work in at least 40 towns.
State law requires town clerks to notify registrars of voters every month of the deaths of residents older than 17. Registrars also conduct an annual canvass by mail to see whether voters still are local residents.
Joseph Camposeo, the president of the town clerks association, said in many cases voters die in an out-of-town nursing home, so the local clerk has no record of the deaths.
Bysiewicz filed a complaint with the state elections enforcement commission and also asked state public health officials for help checking a voter registration list against a state registry of deaths.
Election Day '09 was a roller-coaster for election reformers. Instant runoff voting had a great night in Minnesota, where St. Paul voters chose to implement IRV for its city elections, and Minneapolis voters used IRV for the first time—with local media touting it as a big success. As the Star-Tribune noted in endorsing IRV for St. Paul, Tuesday’s elections give the Twin Cities a chance to show the whole state of Minnesota the benefits of adopting IRV. There were disappointments in Lowell and Pierce County too, but high-profile multi-candidate races in New Jersey and New York keep policymakers focused on ways to reform elections; the Baltimore Sun and Miami Herald were among many newspapers publishing commentary from FairVote board member and former presidential candidate John Anderson on how IRV can mitigate the problems of plurality elections.