In the SC voter ID law shot down thread,** jtagain** made the following claim:
This being GQ, I’m asking a narrow question:
In your locale, what procedures are in place and how often are they implemented to remove the deceased from voter registration lists?
Note: this is not a question about intentional shenanigans/outliers in which a political machine stuffed the ballot box by using deceased people’s identities. This is about normal, current procedures to cull the lists of the deceased.
All* Norwegians and their current address is in the national register of residents used for voter lists, tax lists etc.
Entry into and removal from the registry is standard at birth and death.
*By definition you’re not a citizen if you’re not registered.
In Australia there are three levels of electoral roll: Commonwealth, state and local government. These are maintained jointly by the Commonwealth electoral body, the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC), and the state/territory electoral bodies.
The Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages for each state and territory informs the AEC of deaths so that deceased voters’ names can be removed from the rolls: link
Here in Saskatchewan, once the writ drops for the provincial election, the Chief Electoral Officer (a non-partisan public official) hires people to do a door-to-door enumeration, like a mini-census. The enumerator asks who in the household is a Canadian citizen and eligible to vote under the Saskatchewan Elections Act. It’s an offence to vote under the name of a dead person.
For municipal elections, there’s no voters list. To vote, you have to sign a declaration that you are eligible to vote in the municipal election. It’s an offence to make a false declaration.
In Israel, about a month before the elections every citizen receives a letter from the government telling them which voting station to go to (if you don’t get your letter, you can stop by the Ministry of the Interior for a copy). Come election day, you show up at the right place, they look at your government-issued national ID card, check your name and number off their list, give you an envelope and send you to your curtain.
I’m not sure how the whole process actually works, but I assume it involves a database of some sort.
In my town, you get town census document in the mail every January. If you don’t fill it out and return it they remove you from the voter rolls and you have to reregister if you want to vote.
My kids are still alive, but haven’t lived here since the 90’s. Yet they are still on the books. I look every time to make sure ‘‘they’’ haven’t voted. My daughter is registered elsewhere in this state. Likely several places since like many young people, she moved around several times before settling into a house 5-6 years ago. Since she works for the city, she gets election day off. Our state does demand picture ID. I haven’t gotten a straight answer out of my election officials if they compare address to make sure people still live in the district. As far as I know, she could spend the day driving around all the places she lived and vote at each one.
I think there is a huge potential for fraud. I have no evidence it happens much. In 2008, they spent a fortune sending every registered voter a double postcard. Tear off one part and return it if you still live at that address. They both checked off live and registered elsewhere. Both were still on the books in 2010. Some of my neighbors have died. Maybe I will try to check them next year.
Federally, the list of eligible voters is maintained by Elections Canada, who use a combination of tax return, immigration, post office, vehicle registration, vital statistics and door-to-door information gathering data. When we file our taxes, we have the option to check a box allowing relevant information to be sent to Elections Canada. I think a fair amount of people do this! Also, we can register in person on the day of the elections, as long as you present the required proof of identity and residency.
There are two-way agreements with most provinces (except for Saskatchewan and the Yukon Territory) and municipalities to share that information for the purposes of lower-level elections.
In my province, it is the Directeur général des élections(general director of elections) who is responsible for the Permanent List of Electors, and that information is gathered from various sources, including Elections Canada, sources like above and the provincial medical insurance agency (RAMQ).
I admit to not having paid attention to municipal and school board/etc elections, but it appears that the DGE oversees those as well.
I’m getting a kick that most replies have been global.
I (heart) the Dope.
Yes, we have strict standards. 
What’s true in Norway is also true in Sweden.
At election time all people qualified for voting are sent a registry card containing information about name, address, when and where the election takes place etc. Until a couple of years ago this was all you had to bring to the polling station and the head of the Election Authority has told med that he wanted to keep it that way, but the parliament made a law that the voters must also carry a valid ID.
In South Africa, the Independent Electoral Commission maintains a single national voters roll which is used for national, provincial and municipal elections. (Because of the history of segregating people of different races onto different voters rolls, “a national common voters roll” is literally a founding provision of the constitution.) Recording of births, marriages and deaths is a function of national government, and they are tracked on a national population register. The voters roll is cross-checked with the population register before an election.
Every citizen over 16 is supposed to have a national ID, which is issued for free, and the ID is required to register as a voter or to vote. On one or two weekends before an election all the polling places are used as registration stations for new voters or for voters who have moved residence. Because the national ID is proof of citizenship and hence eligibility to vote, the purpose of registration is mainly to make sure that people vote in the right place (particularly for municipal elections).
The national ID is cancelled when someone dies, so it is (in theory) impossible for someone to vote as a dead person, even if the dead person is still registered as a voter. Further, it would be difficult for someone to vote twice as two different people because when you vote your fingernail is marked with an ink spot that lasts for a few days.
Spanish citizens are supposed to register with the Censo of the township where they reside permanently. A month before an election date, Censo lists are printed out and placed at the entrance of City Hall so people can consult them; “censal cards” are sent to people’s registered addresses. If you don’t get yours or you get one for someone who doesn’t live there you’re supposed to contact City Hall/return the card. When someone dies, the Civil Registry automatically reports the death to the appropriate Censo.
In order to vote, you need to present a picture ID from the following list:
+: these are valid only for local (township) elections, where foreign EU citizens can vote and be elected.
I just called a good friend of mine who is very high up at the Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk of Los Angeles. He says they run a program which checks the CA state health department’s list of deaths across the voter registration list; however, he’s not sure how often they do it, because it’s not his department. “Probably at least once a year, if not more often.” When they get a name match, someone checks into other information to verify if it’s really the same person or not. If they can do that, they take the name off of the list, and no one can vote under that name (notwithstanding a challenge ballot, that has to be investigated). It’s a pretty simple process, he says.
[I (heart) the Dope][sup]2[/sup]
UPDATE: He forwarded an email from the person in charge of this (whom I may quote):
[QUOTE=Dorothy Scates, Assistant Division Manager, Voter Records Division, County of Los Angeles]
Our office run the program monthly. Staff compares information on list to voter file and ensure that the correct person is cancelled. If staff is not sure, a supervisor will review the information for final decision. When information does not match voter is not cancelled. When election materials are mailed and returned with “Deceased” written on document, the voter is cancelled. Also, as stated previously notes in the Roster Of Voters are reviewed after each election. [sic]
[/quote]
She’s referring to notes that the poll workers make when they get input from voters in the precinct. So if Mr. Jones knows that Ol’ Lady Smith has kicked the bucket, but sees her name still there on the list, the poll worker will submit that comment to the central office.
So every month they take the names of dead people off the list of people who can vote.
Oh I forgot to mention that with my states failure to purge people no longer living at the address or maybe any address contributes to the terrible turn out. If you are registered at a half dozen places and only vote in one, that a 17% turn out. We really need a serious clean up here.
Registering in more than one place is not possible in Spain: to register in a new place, one of the documents you have to bring is a certificate of de-registration from the previous township (consulate, if you were living abroad). There’s a period during which your registration is invalid while documents are checked: a month if you’re moving within townships, nine (!!!) if you’re moving between consulates or back to the country; I wasn’t able to vote on 14M because of this (I couldn’t vote from NYC any more, but couldn’t vote back home yet). Apparently, the law was written by someone who hadn’t heard of computers, phones or faxes.
And that’s normal, because most countries administer voting on the national level. In the US it was largely local until recently, and even with HAVA and NVRA, voter lists in the U.S. are required to be centralized only on the state level, and counties have traditionally done the footwork of registration, so preventing people from registering in more than one place still requires a lot of inter-agency cooperation. As everyone gets a SSN upon birth (I believe), it would be possible to index each voter by that number on a national level, but HAVA defers to drivers license numbers instead, or only the last four digit of the SSN in lieu thereof, in which case the state issues yet another state voter number. In theory at least, HAVA–however cumbersome–could prevent someone from registering in two separate states, but I don’t really know to what degree anyone is actually checking against it. It certainly would be an interesting challenge in database management.
I work for the county clerk. In Idaho the registration system is computerized at the state level and maintained at the county level. The recorders office informs elections of each death certificate recorded in the county and the elector is removed from the poll books.