How US officials prevent ‘ghost votes’

“I know this sounds scary, but a lot of people are skeptical about the election process, thinking that there are voters who are no longer alive and still on the voting list. We need to be careful,” Tonnie Adams, Heard County elections supervisor in the battleground state of Georgia, said.

Every day Tonnie Adams has to scour local funeral home websites, read every obituary in the newspaper and write down the names of those who have passed away, removing them from the voter rolls.

Although cases of election fraud by using dead people’s names to vote are very rare, US election officials are still especially vigilant because the entire voting process is always closely watched by public opinion.

Many states require the disclosure of voter lists so that everyone can monitor and detect irregularities in the voting process, especially in the 7 battleground states that are considered to determine the outcome.

During the 2020 election, former president Donald Trump claimed that thousands of “dead voters” still voted for president, raising suspicions of election fraud, although unfounded.

Local officials said they have many tools to review voter lists, share lists of people who have died or moved to other electoral areas. However, they sometimes still miss cases of deceased voters.

Jean Hansen, a council employee for the town of Abrams in Wisconsin, said that a man in the area died last month after sending a ballot by mail. After being informed by local residents, her office reviewed and printed this person’s obituary and pinned it to the mail ballot.

“We will not rush to cancel the vote as soon as we hear the information, but will ensure there is solid evidence,” she said.

Wisconsin is among a group of states that do not count early mail ballots from voters who die before Election Day. But 10 other states allow such ballots to be counted.

Some election officials consider an obituary to be enough to remove someone’s name from the voter rolls. However, others require additional evidence by sending a letter to the address of the person named on the obituary and asking relatives to confirm the information.

American voters’ votes always have a code to track. US officials have warned that anyone who cheats by voting using a dead person’s name will be prosecuted.

A Minnesota woman was accused of election fraud last month when she impersonated her mother, who passed away earlier this summer, to submit a mail-in ballot. A Pennsylvania man was also sentenced in 2021 to five years of probation for sending in a 2020 ballot on behalf of his long-dead mother.

However, election officials affirmed that these types of fraudulent votes were not large enough to affect the election results.

Patty Hansen, an election supervisor in Arizona’s Coconino County, said she and her colleagues review obituaries in local newspapers several times a week to remove dead voters’ names from the system. This process takes about 10-15 minutes.

Hansen added that she had never faced such scrutiny in her more than three decades working at the election agency. According to her, reviewing obituaries helps build trust with voters.

“We’re trying to be very careful,” she said.