April 28, 2008
UConn Students Ghostbust Dead Voters
Dead voters haunt election politics, and Marcel Dufresne wanted to get to the bottom of their eerie existence. So the associate professor of journalism at the University of Connecticut enlisted a dozen students in a comprehensive analysis of voting and death records in the state.
At a time when debates over voter-identification laws and ballot-box fraud enliven an already zesty election season, the UConn team found more than 8,500 late residents still on the voting rolls, according to an article published last week in The Hartford Courant. In elections since 1994, more than 300 people across the state appeared to have voted after their deaths, the investigation found.
But as students visited town halls and pored over records, they found innocent explanations, like identical names and clerical errors. Only 10 times did people not registered to vote cast ballots under dead voters’ — in most cases their mothers’ or fathers’ — names.
“We never did find fraud,” said Mr. Dufresne. “But what we have here is a system in disarray.”
The solution, he said, lies in devising electronic systems to synchronize voter databases and death records — and training local registrars to use those systems.
A day after the Courant published the students’ report, Connecticut’s secretary of state urged its elections-enforcement commission to determine whether registrars and town clerks had deleted dead residents from voting rolls.
“The response right now may be more intense,” Mr. Dufresne said. “Every state wants their system to be sound.”
The professor was glad to bolster his students’ investigative skills, too. His commitment to sending students into the political fray comes from his own experience as a college reporter, covering George McGovern in the 1972 New Hampshire primary.
Sara Lipka | Posted on Monday April 28, 2008 | PermalinkComments
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Now maybe I can get off CT’s rolls. I haven’t lived there since 1996, have voted in two other states and can’t get off the list.
— K Apr 28, 04:11 PM #
Now if Chicago would just purge their voter rolls — as they say in Chicago, “Vote early, vote often”!!
— bb Apr 30, 12:44 PM #