Can dead people vote? Yahoo News Explains

There’s a growing chorus of Republican voices spreading a ghoulish conspiracy theory that the dead may have helped Joe Biden become the 46th president of the United States. These accusations raise two important questions about the dead: First, can their votes be counted? And second, is there an army of fraudulent dead voters who could have pushed President-elect Joe Biden past President Trump at the polls? Luckily, unlike most questions on the afterlife, the answers aren't that complicated. Yahoo News Senior Political Correspondent Jon Ward explains why it’s fairly regular for recently deceased voters to have their ballots counted and, more important, why a coordinated plot to vote in place of dead people in a way that would have any impact on the result is next to impossible.

Video Transcript

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JON WARD: Dead men tell no tales, but can they sway an election? There's a growing chorus of Republican voices spreading a ghoulish conspiracy theory that the dead may have helped Joe Biden become President-elect.

MARIA BARTIROMO: Tell us about the evidence that you have of dead people voting in this past election.

MATT SCHLAPP: Literally dead people are voting in Nevada.

RUDY GIULIANI: I know this city has a sad history of voter fraud. After all, Joe Frazier is still voting here. Kind of hard since he died five years ago.

JON WARD: Which raises two important questions about the dead. One, can their votes be counted, and two, is there an army of dead voters that could have pushed Joe Biden past President Trump? Well, unlike most questions on the afterlife, the explanation to this is not that complicated. With close to 150 million voters casting ballots and historic numbers voting early and absentee, it's pretty much guaranteed that some people will have passed away between the time they voted and election day, but do those votes count and should they? For that answer we have to look at individual states.

When it comes to absentee ballots returned either by mail or to a drop box, there are 13 states that explicitly prohibit counting votes cast by people who are no longer alive by election day according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. When you account for early voting, ballots cast in-person prior to election day, that number grows to 17 states who separate ballots after a person dies. On the flip side, there are another 13 states that do allow absentee ballots to be counted if a person is alive when they cast their ballot but then dies before election day. While it's a little unclear on the other 20 plus states, all states are required to keep their voter rolls up to date, which means removing people who have passed away.

Take Michigan for example, they aren't one of the states with a specific rule, but during the primaries earlier this year, 864 ballots were rejected because the voters died before the election, even though they were alive when they filled out their ballot. Now it takes time to update these voter rolls, and it's incredibly hard to check to make sure every single voter is still living at the time votes are counted if their deaths haven't been reported yet. It's possible that some votes could get through, but it's not enough to have any major impact in deciding an election. As the National Conference of State Legislatures put it, "Unlike many election policy questions, this one does not have a partisan edge. Death makes no distinction between Democrats, Republicans, and Independents as they cast their absentee ballots."

However what doesn't happen is the kind of widespread fraud using dead people's ballots that's been alleged in some dark corners of social media. There's no evidence that thousands of votes are being cast by people who have been dead for decades. Now President-elect Joe Biden leads Trump by 147,000 votes in Michigan and by about 45,000 votes in Pennsylvania. So the idea that it's even possible for someone to arrange a coordinated plot to vote in place of dead people in a way that would have any impact on the result without detection, is a farce.

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