NJ dead are registered voters, but no evidence of fraud

On Jan. 25, 2017, President Donald Trump called for a "major investigation"  into alleged voter fraud across the country. Here is what the Asbury Park Press found when it examined voting rolls last October.

Thousands of the dead remain on New Jersey’s active voting rolls with a handful of votes cast in their names over the years, an Asbury Park Press investigation found, but all were likely due to clerical errors rather than fraud.

UPDATE: Trump vows probe of alleged voter fraud

No election outcomes were changed, even in local races, the Press’ review of votes over the last decade in five of the larger counties in the state.

This week, GOP presidential candidate Donald J. Trump claimed that the upcoming Nov. 8 election is "rigged" and that there would be "large-scale voting fraud.” He pointed to one study that stated the voting rolls across the country were populated with 1.8 million "dead voters."

Yet the idea that the dead could change elections on Nov. 8 remains highly unlikely, considering the vast number of votes cast in each election. And Trump has offered no proof that any fraudulent votes have been cast in past elections by the dead. Even GOP party members have said that there is no basis for a claim that the election will be fixed at the ballot box.

To find New Jersey's dead on the voting rolls, the Press matched the 2016 voting records with the Social Security Master Death Index – the most comprehensive list of the deceased in the nation. It limited the search to voters still considered “active” but who died in 2011 or before. Name, dates of birth and hometowns were used to further narrow the search so common names would not be confused across both databases.

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The Press found 2,460 “active” voters who died in 2011 or before. Of those, 58 votes were cast after their deaths in Monmouth, Ocean, Essex, Bergen and Burlington between 2005 and 2015.

But the Press’ research found that in one case a father’s name was mixed up with a deceased son on the Ocean County voting rolls and no double votes were ever cast.

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In another case, a Burlington County man appeared to have voted 14 times after his death in 2001. Voting associated with his registration stopped in 2016 when his son — with the same name and the same home address — registered to vote. Again, no double votes were cast.

Burlington County Superintendent of Elections Joanne Nyikita said it's possible that the son thought he was registered to vote and did so under his father's name. She said she plans to reach out to the family to see what happened and confirm the man died.

"We can’t delete anyone until we get confirmation they are deceased," she said.

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Nyikita said poll workers — each voting district is staffed with two Republicans and two Democrats — work hard to confirm signatures of voters. Frequently, poll workers have staffed the same precincts for years and know voters from previous years.

But she said mistakes can happen on Election Day where voters may sign the wrong line in voter books at the polls.

National studies have shown that clerical errors, like signing mistakes, are often the real explanations behind cases of suspected voter fraud.

A Loyola Law School professor, Justin Levitt, researched reports of voter fraud dating back to 2000. He found 31 instances of suspected voter fraud in more than one billion ballots cast over a 14-year period.

In a 2007 study completed for Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, Levitt found reports of voter fraud actually were typographical errors, like voters signing the wrong line or voters whose names were transposed during registration. Another example of suspected voter fraud turned out to be people with the same first and last name, but different middle names.

Trump's comments drew a rebuke Tuesday from President Barack Obama, who said the GOP presidential nominee needed to "stop whining and go try to make his case to get votes."

"I have never seen in my lifetime or in modern political history any presidential candidate trying to discredit the elections and the election process before votes have even taken place," Obama said in a press conference.

The voting rolls are hardly pristine. The Press' review of the voting rolls showed at least 920 voters listed as born between 1901 and 1911 — making them 106 or older — with voting statuses listed as “active.” There are dates of birth into the late 1800s, but they could be considered typographical errors and were not counted. But, there are at least 30 active voters in that date range who registered to vote between 1927 and 1942 – and are still living at the same address.

In 2010, the census reported there were 1,700 people over age 100 in NJ. It doesn’t go higher than that. Across the pond, England had just 640 residents 105 and older in 2012, according to their Office of National Statistics. Their total population is five times higher than New Jersey’s.

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A reporter’s grandmother died in 2002, but is listed as still active on the Ocean County voter’s rolls. No votes had been cast in her name.

Nyikita said she and other New Jersey officials overseeing voter rolls make a concerted effort to keep the rolls accurate, she said. They compare their rolls to monthly vital statistic reports they get from municipalities and the state as well as Department of Motor Vehicle records and the Social Security Administration.

Robert Giles, director of New Jersey Division of Elections confirmed the same.

“The State receives death records weekly from the Social Security Administration and the NJ Department of Health. That information is uploaded into the Statewide Voter Registration System and then the counties use that information to remove voters from the rolls," he said in an emailed statement.

The task can be difficult if a voter dies out of state, Nyikita said. She said the system is better than it once was and is improving.

But even with their best efforts, Nyikita said that there's always a chance some dead people will still be listed as active on voters rolls.

"We certainly try to," she said. "But I wouldn’t bet my house on it."

All this shows how the state voting rolls have many more names than live voters, but voting records show there is no apparent intentional fraud, at least when it comes to the “dead” voting. In a pool of 4.9 million registered voters, it would take a zombie army to change the outcome of a statewide election.

Besides the deceased man, the Press found one Mount Laurel woman whose voter record shows a vote cast in one election after her death. By comparison, Burlington County has 308,000 registered voters.

Bergen County, where there are more than 550,000 registered voters, had five voters who appear to have cast ballots after federal records indicate they died.

Susanne Cervenka: 732-643-4229; scervenka@gannettnj.com.