Dead People Voting in Houston (Update – Also in Dallas)

UPDATE 10/30/08: More from the Texas Watchdog:

Widow Erma Porter sought help from Dallas County elections officials after she learned someone may have used her late husband Melvin’s name to vote — more than a year after his death….Erma Porter worries that such flaws in the system make it easier for someone to commit voter fraud….(Continue reading on the Texas Watchdog)

ORIGINAL POST 10/9/08: The Texas Watchdog has compared the the Harris County, TX voting records to a federal death records database, and found 4,000 people who are listed on both:

Woodwick Street was quiet — with a few residents working in their yards and adding to post-storm brush piles at the curb — when Texas Watchdog visited on a recent Saturday to try to find Harris County voter Linda K. Hill.

“I’m sorry, but she passed on two years ago,” said a mustached man wearing a Dallas Cowboys baseball cap and driving a motorized chair down the street. He was Linda Hill’s husband, Henderson Hill Jr.

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….Continue reading Ballots cast in Houston using dead voters’ names >>