Dead S. Fla. Voters Purged From Rolls
FORT LAUDERDALE (CBSMiami) – Can you be in the grave, but still have a pulse to vote? The answer is yes, in South Florida.
Using a new data base, the Florida Department of State found nearly 52,000 dead people still listed as active voters. So far, Broward has pulled out 4,482 names of dead voters from the rolls; Miami-Dade has dropped 4,860 dead voters from the rolls, according to Chris Cate, the Communications director at the Florida Department of State.
"Obviously it's absurd, but how do you police it, I don't know," wondered voter Augi Moran.
"It's not right but I don't know what the government is doing about it," said voter Seymour Braun.
The chair of Broward's Republican party, Richard DeNapoli, fears it's only the tip of the iceberg.
DeNapoli said his office cross referenced social security information with the Broward Elections office list and found hundreds of dead voter names still on the rolls. He said in 2011 there were 9900 deaths in Broward County. Also the Broward GOP checked 2100 of those names and determined 481 deceased voters were on the rolls.
Broward County Supervisor of Elections, Dr. Brenda Snipes is looking into the non-citizen voters and the Broward GOP claims on dead voters. She said verification is a process.
Snipes also noted that reconciling death and voter registration in South Florida is challenging because of our transient population. In other words someone may live in South Florida but will die in another state or even another country.
"We rely on the state to send information and will accept information from families if there is a death certificate,"said Snipes. "We are up to date on the information and process it as soon as we have it," Snipes insists.
Additionally, the Broward elections office said voters who miss two federal elections are reclassified as inactive, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. CBSMiami checked with the Broward elections office and was told that if you are moved to the inactive list, you have to re-register to vote.
Broward's GOP is hoping all the rolls are up to date in time for the presidential election in November.
Given the new restraints on voter registration efforts, that has the possibility of hampering some voter turnout in the coming presidential election.
Historically, if turnout for the presidential election is heavy, it favors Democrats and conversely, if turnout is light, it favors Republicans.
