Tulsa World: Election Board secretary offers explanations for apparent votes by dead

Home > News > Article

Comment

RSS

Bookmark

Election Board secretary offers explanations for apparent votes by dead

By GAVIN OFF World Data Editor
Published: 6/2/2009 4:36 PM
Last Modified: 6/2/2009 4:37 PM

After a Tulsa World investigation found up to 10 Oklahomans had apparently voted after their deaths in recent years, a state official said there are logical explanations for at least nine of the cast ballots.

Paul Ziriax, secretary of the Oklahoma State Election Board, said Tuesday documents showed no proof of voter fraud. His comments came in response to a story in Sunday’s Tulsa World.

“In the vast majority of the 10 cases identified by the Tulsa World, it appears that data entry errors are the culprit,” Ziriax said in a statement.

In five cases, voters apparently signed the wrong line in the precinct registry. The mistakes led to data entry errors when county election board members logged voter history into a state database.

One of those cases involved a deceased voter who had the same name as his son. In two cases, there was not a signature next to the deceased person’s name. Again, data entry errors likely caused the mistakes, Ziriax said.

And in two more cases, voters appeared to cast an absentee ballot just days before their deaths. The ballots, counted after the voters died, were still legal under state law.

Ziriax said a 2006 case involving a Lincoln County man is still under investigation.

To find the inconsistent ballots, the World joined an election board database of some 12 million votes cast since 1999 with a Department of Health database of Oklahomans who died in recent years.

The investigation found as many as 10 people were marked as voting after their death and as many as 429 deceased Oklahomans were still registered as voters.

Register for Latest News Alerts: Every day at 4 p.m, get the day's top headlines sent directly to your inbox. It's free and easy to set up. Already a registered user? Click here to visit your profile to sign up. For new registration, click here.

By GAVIN OFF World Data Editor

Comment

RSS

Bookmark

Reader Comments

Reader comments for this story have been moved to the most updated version of the story, now under the headline "Votes of the dead may not be fraud," which was published on 6/3/2009. So far, 21 comments have been made.