An NBC Bay Area Investigation has uncovered thousands of California voters who remain on the voter rolls despite having died several years ago.
That discovery prompted several state and Bay Area election officials to re-examine their records, after our investigation brought this issue to light.
NBC Bay Area used the Social Security Administration’s Death Master File to cross reference with the California state voter rolls using name, date of birth, and similar zip codes to find matches. We found over 25,000 questionable names still on the state voter rolls.
A closer look at the data revealed that some of the dead people were not only registered, but somehow, even voted, several years after their death. Sometimes, clerks say the mistake can purely be a clerical error, such as a misplaced signature or an outdated registration list that hadn't been purged. Other times, though, the voting turns out to be fraud, clerks say, where family members vote on their dead relatives' behalf.
