Absentee ballots of voters who died could get counted

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Missouri's statewide inconsistency in checking death notices against absentee ballots means some dead people could still have their votes count on Election Day.

"I'm comfortable with saying that's a possibility," Terry Jarrett, chief legal counsel for Secretary of State Matt Blunt, said Tuesday.

It's actually likely, according to county clerks interviewed Tuesday. The clerks are in charge of running elections in jurisdictions large and small.

"We check it against the newspaper obituaries, but I don't know of any way to be 100 percent sure that every absentee is alive on Election Day," Oregon County Clerk Gary Hensley said from his office in Alton, in southern Missouri. "Many of the absentees do tend to be older or sick folks, and they do pass away. That they are sick, that's why many vote absentee in the first place."

For six weeks before Election Day, Missouri allows absentee voting for specific reasons, including illness and inability to get to polling places. This year, there has been a surge in requests for absentee ballots, including efforts to gather votes from senior citizens, the hospitalized and shut-ins.

The law also requires that absentee ballots be rejected "if sufficient evidence is shown to an election authority" the voter died before polls open on Election Day.

The subject is delicate for election officials, but they acknowledge that life expectancy tables may not be generous to these voters.

State vital records show an average of about 151 voting-age Missourians died every day in 2003. Based on 2003's numbers, more than 6,200 voting-age Missourians could die during the six-week absentee balloting period.

But officials don't dependably know how many absentee voters die between casting their ballot and Election Day, because mailed updates of state death records can run several weeks behind.

For example, Christian County Clerk Kay Brown said her staff on Tuesday was working from the most recent state-provided list of dead people -- but it was only current through August.

Absentee voting started Sept. 21.

In St. Louis County, where perhaps 40,000 absentee ballots could be cast, Republican elections director David Welch said there is "simply no way" to stay current on absentee voter deaths in the days before the election, but "we try to catch as many as we can."