Published on The Wichita Eagle on August 31, 2011, by Phillip Brownlee
Dead people aren’t voting in Sedgwick County. That’s a relief. Now we can get back to worrying about other nonexistent problems, such as that illegal immigrants are voting.
Sedgwick County Election Commissioner Bill Gale recently cross-checked the county’s voter database against the Social Security Death Index, national obituary websites and other sources. His office identified 141 people on the voter rolls who were deceased.
That’s not too surprising. A dead person can remain on the voter rolls for a variety of reasons, such as if the person moved out of state and then died without the Kansas Department of Health and Environment’s Office of Vital Statistics learning about it.
But it was good that Gale’s office cleaned up its records.
Secretary of State Kris Kobach thinks so, too. He applauded Gale’s efforts and encouraged other election commissioners across the state to cross-check their voter rolls.
“Every deceased voter that remains on Kansas’ voter rolls creates the risk of a fraudulent vote being cast,” Kobach said in a statement.
A risk, perhaps. A reality? Not in Sedgwick County.
Gale determined that no one claiming to be one of the dead people had voted after the person’s death.
That’s been the pattern with concerns about voter fraud in Kansas — lots of hype; little or no evidence.
For example, Kobach repeatedly has noted that [….]
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