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Location: Blogs Dan's Blog |
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| Posted by: Dan McGrath |
6/3/2009 |
 Today, Minnesota Majority announced the discovery of individuals who were deceased prior to November 4, 2008, yet have voter history records on the secretary of state’s files that indicate they voted in the 2008 General Election.
Minnesota Majority employed a data enhancement service to flag potentially deceased individuals on Minnesota’s voter registration file. Over 2,800 individuals who voted in the 2008 general election were flagged as being “deceased” prior to the election. Minnesota Majority then selected a sample of a dozen records for additional investigation. A representative drove to addresses listed on voter registration records. Interviews conducted with residents or neighbors confirmed that at least 5 individuals from the sample were deceased, the latest having died in March 2007.
Deputy Secretary of State Jim Gelbmann said that the records of the 5 dead voters were erroneously updated with a vote history by election workers and were not examples of fraud.
“The first problem with their explanation is that there should not even be deceased individuals on the voter rolls”, said Jeff Davis, president of Minnesota Majority.
Minnesota statute 201.13 says that the commissioner of health is to provide the secretary of state with a monthly report of residents who have died. The secretary of state is then responsible for working with county auditors to update voter registration records to flag the records of deceased individuals.
“The second problem with the secretary of state’s explanation is that it basically acknowledges the lack of controls in the way in which voter history updates are being captured and recorded,” said Davis. “If the proper controls had been in place, this situation would not have occurred.”
Minnesota Majority originally notified Secretary of State Mark Ritchie that there was evidence that a significant number of deceased people were present on the voter registration file in a letter dated October 16, 2008. “Even having been notified of this problem in advance of the election, the secretary appears to have failed to take corrective action,” said Davis. “Bottom line. Election officials have failed to obey the law, thus making our election system vulnerable to errors and abuse.”
As to the question of whether any fraud involving dead voters occurred in the past election, Minnesota Majority says this question must still be answered. “There are still 2800 records that need to be reviewed,” said Davis.
Minnesota Majority renewed its call for a formal investigation into Minnesota’s elections. An 18-month investigation conducted by a joint task force consisting of the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and local law officials in Wisconsin revealed problems strikingly similar to what Minnesota Majority says it is finding in Minnesota’s election system. |
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Comments (23)
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Re: Do the Dead Vote in Minnesota? |
By Alex on
6/4/2009 |
Surely the crucial question here is not whether some of the people on the electoral roll are dead because of poor updating. The question is whether any of the dead people still listed on the electoral roll are also listed as having voted.
You have a list of 2,800 "potentially" dead people. Your sample of 12 gave a result of 5 who were actually dead (or the equivalent of 1,166 actually dead people). How many of the 5 actually dead people are listed as having voted in the election? |
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Re: Do the Dead Vote in Minnesota? |
By dan.mcgrath on
6/4/2009 |
Alex: All of them. The list of over 2,800 voters we've flagged as potentially dead also all have voter histories indicating that they voted in the 2008 election after they had passed away.
We say potentially dead, because the service we employed to determine whether they were dead produces some false-positives, due to individuals with the same name and year of birth. The preliminary match requires additional (time-consuming and labor-intensive) research to verify with certainty that they are dead and that we have matched the right person to the voter history.
Of the 12 we sampled, we were able to positively identify 5 voters as being deceased - but we were obly able to determine that 2 of them were alive. The other 5 are still suspected dead voters but we haven't confirmed them one way or the other at this time. |
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Re: Do the Dead Vote in Minnesota? |
By Ken on
6/4/2009 |
| Okay...so what? Who did these potentially deceased voters vote for? There's no way to really tell, right? So the only fair solution is to remove a number of votes from that amount from each candidate's tally in a proportion equal to the percentage they received from the overall vote total. Nothing really changes. We're still stuck with two major party candidates that aren't qualified for the office of Senator. |
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Re: Do the Dead Vote in Minnesota? |
By princetrumpet on
6/4/2009 |
| I'm begging you... are you ABSOLUTELY sure of this? If you are, it's HUGE. If you aren't right on this, it's going to be another embarrassment for us. I want you to be right. I've been burned enough to be skeptical when something sounds too "good" to be true. Good luck. |
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Re: Do the Dead Vote in Minnesota? |
By dan.mcgrath on
6/4/2009 |
| You are correct that any votes that may have been erroneously or improperly counted are indistinguishable from any correctly counted votes, but the point here is preventing this problem in the future. Policy changes tightning the data handling methods and record-keeping combined with an ID requirement would eliminate these issues. |
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Re: Do the Dead Vote in Minnesota? |
By dan.mcgrath on
6/4/2009 |
| We have an admission from the SOS that their records reflected that the 5 people had voted after passing away in the 2008 election. They also offered an explanation: data handling errors. The point remains that dead people were on the rolls - a violation of HAVA and state statute, whether the recorded votes were caused by errors or abuse. We don't presently know what the explanation is for the other 2,800 voters who have been flagged by a data service as deceased before the election. |
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New Election Necessary |
By Wally on
6/5/2009 |
| Minnesota's Supreme Court needs to face the facts and call for a new election. The existing tally is so fraught with error it cannot be reconciled. |
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Re: Do the Dead Vote in Minnesota? |
By Big Al on
6/5/2009 |
I'm always amused by these kind of claims.
They miss the most obvious logical flaw - that this would be a TERRIBLE way to rig an election!
Almost 3 million people voted in the Minnesota election, even if ALL 2800 claims turned out to be legitimate AND voted in the election, AND voted for Obama, or Franken, or whatever the claim is, that equals 0.09333333333333334 of the popular vote!
Now, someone had to spend time digging up the death records. If they are going to the polls,you have to find people to "play the part", I mean, you couldn't have some young, black ACORN girl vote for a 75 year old white man. Assuming most deaths occur in older people, you would need a lot of 70-80 year olds in on this. You have to hope that no one who works the polls is a friend, associate, neighbor of the deceased, or the jig is up. (My polling place is staffed by people from my neighborhood, a couple of whom, I know)
You have to have coordination, transportation, making sure each person gets to the polling place and assumes the correct identity at the correct precinct.
I suppose a single person could've done this, but in my state, absentee ballots are mailed to an individual address. That's 2800 individual addresses.
Finally, I am pretty sure election laws are federal. Election fraud is a felony. So, anyone participating in this is surely looking at fines and PRISON TIME.
All of that for 0.09% of the vote. You would have to know in advance that the election you were trying to sway would come down to those kind of numbers.
It all just seems improbable. Claims like this get made every election and to a one, they turn out t be disproved. Compare that to rigging an electronic voting machine with a USB key chain storage device. I'm not saying that happened, but it sure would take a lot less work and be less detectable.
http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/truthaboutvoterfraud/
http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/raising_the_dead_voter_hoax/
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Re: Do the Dead Vote in Minnesota? |
By doug vik on
6/5/2009 |
| Considering that minnesota is one of the most honest states in the country and shenanigans are going on here, what does this say about the rest of the country. I'm guessing there is Democratic Party fraud in every state in the US. The nightmare never ends. |
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Re: Do the Dead Vote in Minnesota? |
By Barb on
6/5/2009 |
What about principle? This was deliberately done and had to have been deliberately hidden. Where there is one deceased person vote stands to reason there are plenty more. This whole mess will only result in what is found. What about what isn't.
Thank you Dan, Minnesota Majority! |
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Re: Do the Dead Vote in Minnesota? |
By Barb on
6/5/2009 |
| Let's not forget the clever slogan: "let every vote count." or something like that. They certainly weren't kidding. And they certainly have shown to be underhanded. |
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Re: Do the Dead Vote in Minnesota? |
By Rottimer on
6/5/2009 |
You guys HAVE to be careful how you phrase these accusations. I just read that 2800 deceased persons actually voted in Minnesota, when in fact, there are 2800 suspected deceased persons on the voter rolls.
I wholeheartedly agree that Minnesota has dropped the ball on this, someone's head should roll, and safeguards should be put in place. In addition, all 2800 names should be investigated by the state. However, you need to be careful how this is framed or it will bite you in the rear end. |
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Re: Do the Dead Vote in Minnesota? |
By dan.mcgrath on
6/5/2009 |
Minnesota Majority has issued statements of facts, explaining our findings. That's all.
As to Al's comments, first of all, just look at the Coleman - Franken race to see how few votes an election can be won or lost by. The trend is Elections are getting closer. Secondly, producing a list of deceased people on the voter rolls is easy to do. It's a simple database excersize. How do you think we noticed the problem to begin with?
That said, we don't yet know the explanation. We only know that for probably a variety of reasons, the statewide voter registration system (SVRS) voter history files maintained by the secretary of state indicate that people voted while dead in the 2008 election. Something is wrong. |
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Re: Do the Dead Vote in Minnesota? |
By Maryl on
6/5/2009 |
| doug vik...why do you assume it's the Democrat Paty at fault here? Most of the voter corruption perpetrated in past years has come from the Republican side. |
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Re: Do the Dead Vote in Minnesota? |
By Brett on
6/9/2009 |
| Are some of you people crazy? Ken Says, "Okay...so what? Who did these potentially deceased voters vote for?" What possible difference could that make since we know the dead did not rise out of the graves and vote? It means the system has been compromised. The next step is to get a special investigation into the Secretary of State's office. These votes are fraudulent and someone cast them. We must also address whether there are voter registrations where the people never existed. That would be the next step. Then, we must find links to the precincts and the judges where this happened. Without a transparent and fair election without fraud, we are not a true democracy. |
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Re: Do the Dead Vote in Minnesota? |
By Stuart on
6/9/2009 |
Maryl, what are you talking about? Pull up the name of any Democrat and you can probably find at least a couple of references to criminals, drug dealers,organized crime, the KKK, etc. Republican impropriety is an aberration. Democrat corruption is condoned, covered-up and enabled by the party.
The Democrats have even made sure Georgia can't verify that a person is even legally able to vote. |
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Re: Do the Dead Vote in Minnesota? |
By Barb on
6/9/2009 |
| This is an exceptionally dangerous time in history. It doesn't matter what happened in the past, we over came. What is happening now, we may never overcome. This is deception and democrats are behind it.Acorn is behind democrats and paid by all people of all government parties (taxpayers). We need the senator that was elected by the freedom of choice of the people to vote and have the votes counted of those of potential benefit, those who are alive. We need to diminish the dishonesty and corruption, as it has become the majority and infiltrating throughout. |
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Re: Do the Dead Vote in Minnesota? |
By Cindy Sue Causey on
6/9/2009 |
Ditto Rottimer: In investigating this, I would be flagrantly using language such as "alleged" while making sure the message is *very* clear others seriously should follow suit..
My question regarding your find would be: How many of these **alleged** dead people voted in direct association with long term care facilities for seniors and persons with disabilities (i.e.: nursing homes, rehabilitation centers, hospitals)..?
The reason for asking is that I simply cannot shake the image of one Jack Justice (Georgia) who **alleged** he asked for a particular vote and another was made in its stead *in spite* of his highly overt objection.. Sadly, **alleged** dead persons do not have the benefit of an equal opportunity to self-advocate for the loss of their voting right in the way my personal hero Jack has been able to do for himself..
Warmest wishes from Talking Rock.. :) |
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Re: Do the Dead Vote in Minnesota? |
By Corky Boyd on
6/9/2009 |
Thanks for doing this study. The threat of voter fraud is real. The efforts by some to register false voters and the reluctance by election boards to purge their lists often leads to fraudulent use of unvoted names being "voted" by corrupt election officials. The zeal by honest folks to address this problem before the election is unfortunately lost afterwards unlessthere is a case like Coleman/Franken to keep it alive.
Republicans should spend their time in efforts to validate the voter lists, not only for the dead, but for people who have moved to another state of reregistered in another jurisdiction (can be done with mail list updaters). The Detroit Free Press in 2002 (I believe) did such a study and found over 30% of Detroit voters' names unverifiable. Currently there are more registerd voters in Detroit than 2008 (census estimates) 18 year olds.
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Re: Do the Dead Vote in Minnesota? |
By Jose Madre on
6/11/2009 |
| Okay, 5 out of a sample 12 that the SOS office showed voted in 2008 are proven to have been deceased before election day. Do a full investigation. If the proven number in any district exceeds the victory margin in any race in that district, void that race and have a new election. If it exceeds the difference between Franken and Coleman, have a new election for the Senate seat. It really is that simple. |
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Re: Do the Dead Vote in Minnesota? |
By Marilyn Mancuso on
6/19/2009 |
| So, Franken won because of these 2800 dead voters... I don't get it... you need a new election. |
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Re: Do the Dead Vote in Minnesota? |
By Jon on
6/19/2009 |
| I just finished reading through John Fund's book Stealing Elections which focuses on voter fraud. He doesn't address the issue of dead people voting which I think is a major problem as shown in MN. If Minnesota Majority is successful in exposing election problems, I hope that the methods will also be used to look at the past presidential election. A good starting place will the state of IL which I expect will be uncooperative in releasing information. When wide spread fraud is found it must be connected to Obama so that he can be charged with a criminal act and removed from office. It happended with VP Spiro Agnew convicted and forced to resign and it can be repeated again. |
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Re: Do the Dead Vote in Minnesota? |
By Andrew on
6/19/2009 |
Yeah, I guess they do, along with illegals and whoever else wants to... and with the full approval of members of congress:
June 17, 2009
Dear Mr. Nelson,
Thank you for contacting me about American voting rights. I am honored to hear from you and proud to represent you. Since coming to Congress, I have been working hard to advance my policy agenda based on four key priorities - peace, prosperity for working families, environmental sustainability and support for human and civil rights.
As citizens of a democracy, the right to vote is the most important right we have because it is the right that guarantees all others. I believe that barriers to voting are unacceptable. During my first term in Congress, I introduced a number of legislative measures aimed at fostering greater voter participation.
In May 2008, I introduced the Election Day Registration Act (H.R. 5946), legislation that would significantly increase voter participation by mandating election-day registration nationwide. Same day registration has been Minnesota state law for over thirty years and has made the state a national leader in voter turnout.
I am also the proud sponsor of the Voter Access Protection Act (H.R. 4026), a bill to ban the use of photo identification as a requirement for voting in federal elections. I believe that this requirement disenfranchises hundreds of thousands of voters, particularly senior citizens, women, young people, minority voters and low-income individuals. Minnesota's thirty-year history with same day voter laws proves that photo identification is not necessary to ensure secure and reliable elections.
Finally, it may interest you to know that I authored the Make Provisional Ballots Count Act (H.R. 5628). Currently there are many different procedures for how provisional ballots are collected and counted. Consequently, nearly one in three provisional ballots cast in the 2004 election were never counted. This legislation sets one federal standard for provisional ballots and establishes a specific counting process that states must follow to ensure that every legal vote is counted.
Please know that securing the right to vote for all Americans will continue to be one of my top legislative priorities in the 111th Congress and beyond.
As always, feel free to contact me on any issue of concern. Please sign up for our e-newsletter by visiting our website at www.house.gov/ellison.
Sincerely,
Keith Ellison
United States House of Representatives
This is an unmonitored email account. Please use our webform at http://ellison.house.gov to contact our office. Replies to this email will not be read.
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