A Maryland organization says it has identified dead people who are listed as active voters on Montgomery County’s voter registration rolls.
Election Integrity Maryland, part of a nationwide network of activists against voter fraud, says it submitted evidence of more than 1,000 irregularities in Montgomery County’s voter registration rolls to the county’s elections board on Wednesday.
Examples of irregularities include duplicate registrations, questionable addresses and dead voters who remain on the rolls.
The group says it is still waiting on a response from election officials regarding another 9,000 irregularities that it has submitted over the last year to state and local election boards in Prince George’s, Baltimore and Montgomery counties.
“We have asked all of the boards to keep us apprised of the progress they make to ensure that Maryland’s voter rolls are up-to-date prior to the next election,” said Cathy Kelleher, president of Election Integrity Maryland.
Montgomery County officials don’t deny that people may remain on their registration rolls after they are dead.
“We cannot take people off the rolls simply because we are provided information from something like Obituaries.com saying someone has died,” said Marjorie Roher, spokeswoman for the Montgomery County Board of Elections. “We have to be very careful with the voter rolls — you can see where it would cause some problems if we were misinformed on a person’s death.”
The board has used the group’s research in the past to help identify potential irregularities, but officials cannot remove voters from the rolls based on that information alone, Roher said.
“The law is pretty specific as to how we can remove people [from the rolls],” said Mary Cramer Wagner, director of voter registration for the Maryland State Board of Elections.
Local election boards check voter registration rolls monthly against a list of deceased residents from the state Health Department. Otherwise, election boards are not authorized to remove names from voter registration lists unless the board has sent the voter three notices in the mail that were returned to the sender unanswered and that person has not voted in two consecutive federal elections.
Members of Election Integrity Maryland say they fear that voter fraud will corrupt elections without the swift removal of inactive voters from the rolls.
“[Election boards] have a duty to comply with federal and state regulations, and to keep voter records accurate,” Kelleher said.
