Dead People Should Be Removed From Voter Rolls – Who Knew?

You may remember back in September Republicans had completed a study of New Jersey’s voter rolls and discovered thousands of cases where people in New Jersey apparently voted more than once, or voted posthumously in the 2004 election.

Republicans forwarded the study to New Jersey Attorney General Peter Harvey, asking for an investigation and appropriate action prior to the election. This year the possibility of vote fraud is even greater because of a new law that allows people to vote by absentee ballot for any reason.

The Republican request brought howls from Democrats that Republicans were trying to block people from voting. Democratic spokesman Richard McGrath said at the time: "If the Republican Party conducted the investigation, it's safe to assume that the facts and figures are wrong and the findings are suspect.

Well, check out the latest goings on in Judge Feinberg’s courtroom:

With Tuesday's vote nearing, a state attorney admitted in Superior Court yesterday that the official charged with tracking deaths has failed to follow a state law designed to remove dead people from voter registration lists.

The startlingly open admission that the state never has complied came when Feinberg asked Deputy Attorney General Melissa Racsa why the required list wasn't provided to the Republican State Committee, which asked for it two months ago after raising concerns about faulty voter rolls.

"Quite frankly, your honor, the registrar was unaware that this was one of his obligations," said Racsa, who represented Komosinski.

"That is almost impossible to understand," replied Feinberg.

Feinberg turned to Deputy Attorney General Karen DuMars, who was representing Attorney General Peter C. Harvey.

"This is the first time this has come to the attention of the attorney general," DuMars said.

"I'm dumbfounded. I just don't understand it," Feinberg responded.

"The notion that this was a statutory responsibility that was unknown to the registrar is just hard to swallow," Feinberg said.

"It is truly alarming," Feinberg said of concerns that people might have used dead people's names to illegally vote.

Feinberg noted her secretary just received a sample ballot for her dead father.

"How does my secretary's father end up getting a ballot?" Feinberg asked. "How does that happen?"

Racsas said 50,000 to 72,000 people per year die in New Jersey, meaning workers could have been mulling over between 1 million to about 1.5 million names if Feinberg had ordered them to do so.

"I have great concern in regards to absentee ballots," Feinberg said.

Roberto writes: “absentee ballots will be twice as high as in 2001 from democrat strongholds in Camden, Essex and Mercer counties. Applications for absentee ballots actually were down in republican leaning counties”