Matt Yglesias

23 Responses to “Dead Votes Count”

1. paul Says:
   November 4th, 2008 at 11:34 am

   and so it would seem that a letter always arrives at its destination

2. mort Says:
   November 4th, 2008 at 11:48 am

   But if you die before the electoral college meets, they cut your vote in half.

3. Richard Cownie Says:
   November 4th, 2008 at 11:55 am

   I think it has to be that way to preserve the secrecy of the ballot: if some official could trace from the name of a dead person to pick out their individual ballot and disqualify it, then they would just as easily be able to pick out a live person’s ballot and see how they voted. And that isn’t a power you’d like a Bush/Palin/Gonzales kind of Republican to have.

4. Don the libertarian Democrat Says:
   November 4th, 2008 at 12:02 pm

   Thanks. That what was really worrying me about dying. My Obama vote in Washington counting. How did you know?

5. Jayhawk Max Says:
   November 4th, 2008 at 12:12 pm

   But not if you live in D.C.

6. PaulC Says:
   November 4th, 2008 at 12:48 pm

   Funny, I wondered the exact same thing yesterday. Assuming the vote does count, I guess it makes sense to vote as early as possible. I prefer to wait till election day, but maybe I need to rethink this. It’s not a serious issue unless you have a good reason to believe you won’t make it.

   It also reminds me of the Onion article from the 2000 election: Bush Executes 253 New Mexico Democrats, Retakes State’s Five Electoral Votes. http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28061

7. Mel Says:
   November 4th, 2008 at 1:20 pm

   We’re all Chicago now.

8. Said Shirazi Says:
   November 4th, 2008 at 1:41 pm

   This is actually highly relevant, because Obama’s grandmother voted before him before she died.

9. jack lecou Says:
   November 4th, 2008 at 1:56 pm

   It seems to depend on the state:

   http://elections.state.wi.us/faq_detail.asp?faqid=3&fid=8&locid=47

10. Crusty Dem Says:
    November 4th, 2008 at 2:04 pm

    jack lecou is right, it depends on the rules in the state. My mother was an election judge in Illinois, and they kept the absentee ballots with the name on the envelope at the precinct, and if the voter died before election day, they threw it out…

11. ThresherK Says:
    November 4th, 2008 at 3:12 pm

    I’m glad somebody looked this up and posted it, because I thought of it and didn’t want to ask. Anyone else?

12. johnrobert Says:
    November 4th, 2008 at 4:40 pm

    I think the rationale for this policy is to make it impossible for people to cancel out votes they don’t like by killing the voters before election day. Voting by absentee ballot could lead to unfortunate incidents if the policy worked the other way.

13. Glaivester Says:
    November 4th, 2008 at 5:58 pm

    I think it has to be that way to preserve the secrecy of the ballot

    Not unless votes that were cast early are counted early. It is my understanding that early ballots are usually kept in an envelope until election day, with information on the back identifying the voter. Like provisional ballots, they can be traced to a specific voter up until the point that they are opened.

    So it is possible to eliminate the votes of early voters who die before election day (at least in Maine). The rationale for counting the votes therefore is obviously something different. (Although it could still be a practical rather than an idealistic reason, e.g. it would be too difficult to comb through all of the early votes to find out if anyone had died).

14. flo Says:
    November 4th, 2008 at 6:09 pm

    absentee votes might be kept in the envelopes, but early voting in Florida has been done by machine, now optically scanned, so there would be no way to go back and ‘uncount’ them; not to mention that one could die on Monday and nobody know about it for 3 weeks…….

15. Richard Steven Hack Says:
    November 4th, 2008 at 7:19 pm

    Dead voters definitely count – especially in places like Texas and Chicago.

    Remember the old story about Lyndon Johnson? A kid is seen crying, somebody asks him what he’s crying about, he says, “My (dead) grandfather came back to vote for Johnson, but he didn’t come by to see me!”

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