This Is How Many Dead People Voted in One Large American State

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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This Is How Many Dead People Voted in One Large American State

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Among the accusations which have been aggressively pressed as some candidates in the latest election have demanded votes be voided or recounted is that some deceased Americans voted. They did, of course, not by any meaningful measure. The actual charge is one of fraud. Live people used the names of dead people to cast extra ballots.

A recent study from Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research shows that over an eight-year period, 14 dead people voted in the State of Washington–maybe. The research paper is titled “Are Dead People Voting By Mail? Evidence From Washington State Administrative Records”.

The institute’s scientists looked at approximately 4.5 million voter records which covered eight years from 2011 to 2018. They screened for incidents of fraud that involved the name of a deceased person. Although they found as many as 14, some may not have involved fraud at all. In some cases, the issue could have been clerical errors. Andrew Hall, a senior fellow at SIEPR commented “We’re talking about 0.0003 percent of all voters over an 8-year period.”

The question of fraud which involves the use of deceased people’s names goes back a long way in Amerian history. The most well-known accusation is that Chicago Mayor Richard Daley used the names of dead people to buffer a small lead John F. Kennedy had in Illinois in the 1960 presidential election. The conspiracy theory is that without Daily’s fraud, Kennedy would have lost Illinois, and in the process the entire election. Repeated examination of the numbers shows the accusation was false.

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SIEPR researchers say an audit of fraud claims that involved deceased people is not difficult. Hall says: “Who votes and who dies are both matters of public record.”

The accusations about voter fraud in the 2020 election have not gone away. They continue to be pressed by several losing candidates, which include President Trump. However, not a single election official in any state has said that the charges are accurate. As a matter of fact, some have gone as far as to call the entire line of argument farcical.

Unfortunately, even after the results of the most election are certified, there will be a large number of Americans who believe that the election was stolen from one candidate or another. And, in addition, there will be some who believe it is because the names of deceased Americans were used as part of the methods used to “steal” an election.

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Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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