Dead people are dead. You know, not alive. Why should their vote count? It shouldn't.

Interesting -- this very topic came up at dinner tonight. My grandmother made sure to vote BEFORE she left for a trip, because she wanted to ensure that if the plane crashed or something, her vote against Bush would still be counted.

We were debating if it would be, and while legally it probably shouldn't, I doubt there would be any practical way to void it.

As long as they were alive WHEN they voted.

How would you kow who's ballot is the deceased?

I think dead votes should be counted as long as they are against Bush.


Also, what do politicians do to court those few "dead voters" who could be quite vital in swing states?

/kidding. maybe.
//power to snarf-snarf's grandmother.

The only possible way to enforce something like this in a wholescale manner (ie, not just absentee ballots that you can just check the name, but early voters as well) would be an entire system of unique id's that correlate a person's vote to their name/info, so that deaths can be tracked in the system and their votes removed.. and this is such a huge invasion of private voting that it probably will never happen

a vote cast should be a vote counted

...provided the vote was legit to begin with


/tired of the bull@#&$

They better count, or politicians will go on killing sprees.

Either the vote of a living person who becomes deceased before the election should be legal, or early voting should be illegal.

I can see justification for either of those stances, but anyone who says a legally cast early ballot should be later invalided is nuts.

What if they're un-dead?

It's okay for people to vote OR die, but not both. But then again, how else did Kennedy win Illinois in '60? Say it with me, people: Gi-a-ca-na.

The person was alive at the time of voting, so it should count. It would be different it it said in the will, vote for whoever in case I die. As long as the person was alive and kicking at the time he filled his ballot, it should be counted.

/two cents

If they were alive when they cast the ballot, it should be counted. Next question? This shouldn't be anything too controversial.

"Rock the vote or else I'm going to stick a knife through your eye."
-P. Diddy....on South Park

I can understand voting early for military personnel. I can understand early voting for college students. But why are we allowing everyone else to vote early? If they are doing this, why not just have election week? If you miss the day, tough luck.

/very, very tired of hearing about problems with voting
//use a friggin scantron or somethin' like pencil/pen and paper

If soldiers who die in Iraq AFTER they vote but BEFORE the votes are counted have their votes disqualified on those grounds, there's something wrong :P

As was pointed out by the election official in the last story about this, it's much like someone voting at the polling place and dying on the way home.

Vote still counts as they were alive at the time. You don't vote based on future residency/citizenship, you vote based on CURRENT residency and citizenship.

Y. Dload: A friend's dad says he personally witnessed hundreds of fraudulent votes for Kennedy, as a police officer monitoring the polls. But since he cared more for his life than for 'the truth', he didn't dare report it.

I really hope we are more civilized today.

(Of course I'd rather have had Kennedy during the Cuba Missile Crisis than Nixon...)

Next we are going to see politicians invading the hospices and emergency rooms trying to score votes

Did anyone see Black Sheep with Cris Farley and the skinny guy?

/go vote eitherway, but go kerry!

Kevin: That comment should have stopped this thread immediately...
/except for this post?

qqtortqq
Isn't that what Bush is doing while visting Walter Reed.

/trolling and baiting

What if you are deemed legally dead but are later revived, do you get 2 votes? The fact is that it happens all the time.

If dead people didn't vote, how could any Democrats get into office?

But the point is, the people in question were alive when they voted. They voted legally and properly by absentee ballot. I say their votes should count the same as if they died walking away from the polls on election day.

What if you vote, but die before the new president takes office? Should your vote not have been counted? What if someone votes on election day and on the way home gets hit by a bus and dies?

Why shouldn't the vote count?

Well, what about people who cast votes in person but then die before the person who won enters office? I think that it's the same concept and has been argued before.

Anyway, I think that the votes should count....think about a us army soldier that casts his absentee ballot then gets killed in iraq. He absolutely deserves his voice.

Mouser:

Great Point

/A good democrat is a dead democrat

I just RTFA and not counting the vote of the lady did is citizen duty just an hour before dying looks to me like not respecting her will. If many asshats don't bother to vote it's their problem but the will of people who did legally their citizen duty of voting before dying should be honored.

If you want to subtract the votes of people who die why not also subtract the vote of everyone who died during the last 4 years including each soldiers. Maybe if this were done Gore would be president now.

What if I know I am going to die in a few months, and it's July, do I get a special vote?

I don't understand why this is a problem

/lives in Chicago

Okay picture this. A soldier in Iraq sends in his absentee ballot. Then the day before the election he gets blown up. You be the politician whose team of poll-policing lawyers tries to get that guy's vote thrown out.

Go on. I can smell your fear.

statisticaly irrelivent of course it should count.

From TalkingPointsMemo:

According to Gallup's mega-final-ultra poll out Sunday evening, 30% of registered voters in Florida have already voted, either through early voting or by absentee. Of those who have already voted, Kerry leads President Bush 51% to 43%.

According to the Des Moines Register poll out late Saturday evening, 27% of Minnesota adults have already voted. And among those Kerry leads 52% to 41%.

I wouldn't have thought that many people voted early.

At any rate, suppose some of those people have dropped dead. How the heck would you know who they voted for anyway?

If it were possible to sort out, votes of the dead should absolutely NOT count. A vote isn't a report card but a choice concerning leadership for the future. The dead have no stake in the lives of the living. But it seems to me that this is one more area that the Dems can use to sue after an election to try and get their way.

Sure they should count...old people are likely to vote Republican, and damned if we don't need it!

/pwned
//not Republican

Serutan:

Sounds like something John Kerry and his sidekick trial lawyer would do.

andrew131

No, but if you know you are going to die before the election and you can still fill out the absentee ballot paper and you are alive when you get your ballot and ship it out, I don't see any particlar problem with that. But your not getting a special ballot because your sick or dying.

I got farked on my voters registration. I moved counties before moving into college and they were supposed to send me a new voter's registration card but didn't. So i filled out a voter's registration request form informing them of my new address, never got a new card. Requested an absentee ballot, never recieved one. I blame John Kerry for this.

Should they cancel the votes of soldiers who voted but who will die before election day?

//I don't think so!

RockIsDead

As long as they were alive WHEN they voted.

This raises an interesting prospect: suppose this "early voting" deal were taken to its logical conclusion, and people were allowed to include in their wills a perpetual vote for some particular party? It would certainly change the entire agenda of political parties.

TheRising
A good democrat is a dead democrat

Thank you, TheRising, for your pithy observation. I am sure you have garnered many golf claps with that bit of "bring us together" wit. Don't try to cash them all in at once.

if their vote isn't counted then vote rigging could get kinda messy...

margarine of error,
what you said is completely irresponsible. "The dead have no stake in the lives of the living." You should be ashamed of yourself for saying that. That is equal to saying that the soldiers that died for my freedom died for nothing or that the forfathers of this country but were killed by the British before the Constitution was inacted have given nothing to us. Have you ever heard of dying for a cause?

Sounds like something John Kerry and his sidekick trial lawyer would do.

What about the evil trial lawyer Karl Rove hand-picked for the Florida senate race? You know, the evil trial lawyer George Bush proudly referred to as "the embodiment of the American Dream" when he nominated him as HUD Secretary. You know, THAT evil trial lawyer ...

Or are trial lawyers only evil if they are Democrats? What was that Bush said? Oh yeah: "You cannot be pro-doctor, pro-patient, pro-hospital and pro-trial lawyer at the
same time."

Hmmm.

oldebayer:

Why would i want to be "together" with people who are going to vote for John Kerry and his little puppet?

/like before, a good democrat is a dead democrat (who hasn't already voted)

I was just wondering about this before clicking on Fark. Good to know that even if I died moments after completing this post, my political will would still be done.

I telemarket calls for politcal surveys.

The company is run by a republican, so sometimes we get slanted polls.

One poll that we did had a format that a lot of them do, who are you voting for D or R and if they answered democrat we said thank you and goodbye and if they answered republican, then we asked if they wanted a yard sign and an absentee ballot.

Scariest thing was when I asked this little old lady whether she wanted an absentee ballot she said no, because they had already gotten one for her husband before he died IN June! So, he would be voting right along with her.

There is a major problem with that me thinks...

Since when was George Bush a trial lawyer? He has an MBA from Harvard.