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I may be 72," Maria Arredondo from Michigan told us when we called her. "But I'm alive and breathing. My mind is working fine and I'm healthy."
Maria said she had voted for Joe Biden and was surprised to hear that her name had appeared on a list of supposedly dead voters in the state.
We spoke to other people in similar situations to that of Maria in Michigan and found similar stories.
To test the list, we picked 30 names at random. To this we added the oldest person on the list.
Of this list of 31 names, we managed to speak directly to 11 people (or to a family member, neighbour or care home worker) to confirm they were still alive.
For 17 others, there was no public record of their death, and we found clear evidence that they were alive after the alleged date of death on the list of 10,000. A clear pattern emerged - the wrong records had been joined together to create a false match.
Finally, we found that three people on the list were indeed dead. We examine these cases later.
When we looked for another centenarian, who according to the list had died in 1977, we found that she had still been alive when her postal ballot was returned in September. However, a neighbour told us the woman had died just a few weeks ago. We also found a matching obituary from October to confirm this.
Two other men on our list of 31 died some time ago, yet votes had been cast in their names - with the correct postcodes and years of birth - according to the voting database.
We found that for both men, there were sons with the same name currently registered at the same address as their deceased fathers.
In both cases, a ballot was sent in for the dead fathers.
Local election officials told us that one of the votes had been counted but there was no record of the son having voted.
In the other, it was the son who actually voted, but it had been recorded as the father's due to a clerical error.
US Election 2020: The 'dead voters' in Michigan who are still alive
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday December 10 2020, @08:22PM (1 child)
It is interesting that you mention the Federalist Society in your post.
As an outsider that looks to me a lot like the republicans are only loyal to their party, and the Federalist Society is where they send potential judges for training.
The fact that the current crop of challenges to your recent election are being thrown out by these judges is not an indication that they will continue to do that, it is a sign that they're going to need to do better next time, and I think they will. The people who are driving these cases are circus clowns who can't book a room in a hotel for a press conference and wind up doing it in front of a landscaping business instead. That seems to be a step too far, even for the republican party, but it shouldn't be too hard for them to find someone less moronic next time.
Yes, your system is broken and desperately needs reform, but the problem is the built in inflexibility which makes change too hard.
For example, your election was in November, but the winner can't take office until January, because it took that long to ride a horse to Washington in the 18th century. That needs to change, but it won't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 11 2020, @12:27AM
Actually, Inauguration day was originally 4 March, and wasn't changed to 20 January until 1937 [wikipedia.org].
I'd also point out that the winners of down-ballot elections (both federal and state/local) generally don't take office until 1 January after the election.