Dozens of Connecticut’s registered voters are actually people who died several years ago.
NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters and a team at Central Connecticut State University cross-checked information from the Social Security Death Index and the current state voter registry and discovered that more than 30 deceased people are still registered to vote in the state. Each of the deceased individuals was found to have registered to vote after they died.
Secretary of State Denise Merrill (D) said that clerical errors may account for the deceased being on the state’s voter registry.
“It’s very difficult to get information about people who die out of state,” Merrill said. “When it’s in state, we have the information. Usually, it gets transferred on to our voter rolls. But not always.”
Merrill reported that the state is not aware of ever having an incident of in-person voter fraud.
However, Dan Kelly, who managed the 2010 election campaign of Gov. Dannel Malloy (D-CT), admitted last year that, “Connecticut has a long tradition of running horrific paid GOTV programs.” He described “mutinous canvassers, ACORN-style groups lying about voter contacts, and local activists demanding cash to pay ‘their people’ on Election Day.”
Kelly summarized, “Sometimes it’s better not to ask questions.”
Though Republican registrars of voters in Bridgeport and Stamford complained that their offices had received hundreds of illegitimate registration cards following ACORN voter drives, state investigators cleared ACORN of charges of voter fraud, claiming there was a lack of sufficient evidence against the organization. However, it was also noted that the state commission experienced difficulty in contacting witnesses about the alleged fraudulent voter cards due to the fact that canvassers and applicants were discovered to be either no longer living at the addresses provided or imprisoned.
Photo credit: AMC, 2010