Dead man on voter rolls sparks inquiry

Dead man on voter rolls sparks inquiry

Thursday, September 23, 2004

Michael Scott
Plain Dealer Reporter

Painesville - At least one Lake County voter would have made quite a comeback to cast a ballot Nov. 2.

He has been dead for more than two decades, elections officials said.

In a seemingly lesser miracle of wayward democracy, an elderly nursing home resident who only scrawls a shaky "X" when signing official documents suddenly regained a firm, crisp cursive signature when she registered.

Both the dead man and the elderly woman were signed up by voter registration advocacy groups, Lake County elections officials said.

"Those were not their signatures," Lake elections board Director Jan Clair said Wednesday. "Now, we're talking about election fraud here, and we're going to take some of these cases to the prosecutor."

Clair said the veracity of dozens of registration cards and maybe hundreds of absentee ballot requests are being investigated by the Lake County board in an election year with possibly record-setting registration efforts. The 12,000 new registrations in Lake County this year more than double the last two years combined, she said.

"Let's just say there are a lot of voter advocacy groups out there this year with a number of zealous participants who maybe don't understand the law regarding this type of activity," Clair said.

"We're not going to be allowing anyone to intrude on the integrity of democracy," Clair said.

She said that the registration of the deceased man was filed by the National Voter Fund, the registration arm of the NAACP, and the woman in the nursing home was registered by the group Americans Coming Together, known in this state as ACT Ohio.

She said ACT Ohio had been to two Lake County nursing homes and a number of registrations were now in question.

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