When it comes to deleting the deceased from Kansas voter rolls, county election commissioners depend on ELVIS. But election officials say even ELVIS — which stands for Election Voter Information System, which cross-references voter rolls with state records — can’t shake out all the names that no longer belong.
Sometimes a onetime Kansas voter moves out of state and dies without the Kansas Department of Health and Environment’s Office of Vital Statistics noting it, said Sedgwick County Election Commissioner Bill Gale. Gale recently cross-checked Sedgwick County voters with the Social Security Death Index, national obituary websites and other sources. Then his office deleted 141 on the voter rolls identified as deceased, including at least one who died a decade ago.
Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who has advocated more stringent vetting of voters, applauded the effort and encouraged election commissioners across the state to follow Gale’s lead.
“Every deceased voter that remains on Kansas’ voter rolls creates the risk of a fraudulent vote being cast,” Kobach said in a statement.
However, the dead people aren’t voting — at least not in Sedgwick County.
Gale’s office found only one case where someone appeared to have cast a ballot after their recorded date of death. But when workers dug out the polling books from the county courthouse archives, they found someone had handwritten “deceased” in the signature field. Gale thinks the voter’s spouse likely noticed the deceased person’s name on the list and wrote that to notify election officials.
Full Article: Sedgwick County: Dead aren’t voting | Wichita Eagle.