BILL NUMBER: S6254

SPONSOR: JORDAN
 
TITLE OF BILL:

An act to amend the election law, in relation to removal of a voter from
voting rolls due to death

 
PURPOSE:

The purpose of this bill is to ensure that the name of a deceased person
is removed from the voting roll upon their death.

 
SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:

Section One amends article five of the election law as it pertains to
the registration and enrollment of voters by adding a new section 5-714.
The State Board of Elections would be required to annually review the
social security administration death master file and notify the relevant
local board of elections of any and all deceased voters on their regis-
tration roll. The local board of elections would then be required to
remove the deceased voter from the roll. A safeguard exists to allow an
              

individual to vote via affidavit ballot in the event that their name is
erroneously removed from the voting roll.

Section Two contains the effective date.

 
JUSTIFICATION:

The Election Law currently provides that the name of a voter must be
removed from the registration roll upon their death. The process
requires that the New York City Department of Health and the New York
State Department of Health transmit a list of deceased persons to the
state board of elections. The State Board of Elections then distributes
the names to the relevant local boards for removal.

However, this list is not compiled in real time, nor does it consist of
the names of individuals who have died out of the state; no mechanism
currently exists to ensure that the name is in fact removed. A 2012
report by the Pew Center on the States finds that more than 1.8 million
dead people are registered to vote throughout the country. This raises
the concern that our election system may be vulnerable to fraud. It is
imperative that our voters have confidence in our election system.

A study conducted by the Poughkeepsie Journal in October 2006 of the New
York State voting database found that the list contained the names of as
many as 77,000 deceased individuals, and that as many as 2,600 of them
had cast votes from the grave. The analysis consisted of the matching of
names, dates of birth, and zip codes of registered voters against the
same information in the Social Security Administration "Death Master
File".

In October 2013, Newsday performed a computer analysis which showed
roughly 6,100 deceased persons are still registered to vote in Nassau
County, and 2,490 deceased persons are still registered to vote in
Suffolk County. Of the 6,100 deceased persons in Nassau County, 270 of
them actually cast a ballot in Nassau County after dying. Nassau County
has more deceased voters on their registration roll than any other coun-
ty in the state; a quarter of the 26,500 deceased voters still regis-
tered to vote in the state are enrolled in Nassau County.  Furthermore,
a New York City Board of Elections report released December 30, 2013
showed that investigators posing as deceased voters were allowed to cast
39 ballots during the November 2013 election.  Inaccurate voter regis-
tration rolls not only enable fraudulent activity, but may also result
in inaccurate precinct boundaries. The loss of voter trust in the elec-
toral system undermines our democratic process.

This bill protects any voter who may be erroneously removed from the
registration roll by allowing them to vote via an affidavit ballot in
the same manner that an inactive voter would be permitted to vote.

 
LEGISLATIVE HISTORY:

2019-20 - S.8998: Referred to Rules

2015-16 - S.3133: Referred to Elections

 
FISCAL IMPLICATIONS:

None to the State.

 
EFFECTIVE DATE:
This act shall take effect immediately.