I See Dead People Voting - 2008 Houston Edition

Via Instapundit, we find that once again dead people are somehow getting the opportunity to vote in Houston, Texas.

Linda Kay Hill, a homemaker and Louisiana native, died Aug. 2, 2006, of a heart attack, her husband recalled, and is buried at Houston Memorial Gardens in Pearland. But Harris County voter records indicate she –- or someone using her identity –- cast a ballot in the November election that year. Linda Hill of Woodwick Street voted in person on Election Day, records show.

She is among the more than 4,000 people whose names are listed both on Harris County’s voter rolls and also in a federal database of death records, a Texas Watchdog analysis has found.

And dozens of those people, like Linda Hill, have apparently cast ballots from beyond the grave, records since 2004 show. One expert says the number of deceased names used to cast ballots may be higher than what Texas Watchdog’s analysis found.

Instances of dead voters’ names being used to cast ballots were most frequent in three elections, the November 2004 general election, the November 2006 general election and the March 2008 Democratic primary, the analysis found.

Less than a month away from an election to decide the highest office in the land, some advocates worry that such errors in the voter records open the door for fraud, compromise the integrity of results and lessen voter confidence in the system.

How exactly is that possible? It strains credulity that the New York Times and Washington Post and other media outlets minimize the seriousness of the issue of election fraud and that it is not only widespread, but that it undermines our very right to vote. These aren't isolated cases, as we've seen reports of dead people voting in elections every year.

The sad fact is that too many jurisdictions around the country are doing an extremely poor job of clearing the rolls of dead voters and those who are ineligible to vote. Voter fraud is rampant in some areas, and the situation in Houston is likely to be repeated elsewhere in the country. We've already seen that problem here in New Jersey in the past, and I expect it to be repeated here again in 2008.

Every time someone casts one of these fraudulent ballots it undermines your legitimate right to vote. However, the New York Times or other media outlets will report that efforts to ensure that your legitimate right to vote is protected by culling voter rolls of those who should not be on them is somehow restricting your right to vote.

UPDATE:
We saw dead voting, along with felons who were not entitled to vote, in Washington's disputed elections in 2004. The same questions are being asked now as some who are underage are registering to vote:

Questions keep coming up about voter registration practices in Washington state, but not at the scale seen after the disputed governor's race in 2004.

At that time, 1,678 illegal votes cast by felon, deceased and other ineligible voters came into play in a razor-close election decided ultimately by a judge.

The Evergreen Freedom Foundation said Thursday in Olympia it recently found a half-dozen underage voters' registrations listed as "active" in Washington's statewide voter database - the result of a policy that lets 17-year-olds register early, then be activated at the first election they are eligible.

State election officials said there is no cause to worry - that the names had been flagged, and the state's 39 county elections shops are poised to catch the ineligible voters, keeping them from getting a ballot.

Democrats, meanwhile, are claiming that the GOP is trying to suppress minority votes. These are roughly the same arguments made against the banking and financial institutions that were pressured into lowering their guard against subprime borrowing. It's no wonder the arguments are made this way - they work, and it's often the same organizations making them: ACORN.