Dead Registrants Still Haunt Voter Rolls in These Battleground States Days Ahead of Midterms

The names of dead people still remain on state voter rolls across the country, including in key battleground states, with just days to go before the midterm elections.

A Department of Homeland Security memo from July noted more than 400,000 deceased individuals were on the voter rolls across 25 states that were using the SAVE system, a federal database short for Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements. That total is out of about 68 million voter records reviewed.  

Control of the U.S. Senate could hinge on several competitive contests in Ohio, Texas, North Carolina, Georgia, and Kansas. The Homeland Security memo shows each of these states identified tens of thousands of deceased people on voter registration rolls, but officials from those states and data from the Public Interest Legal Foundation assert that improvements have been made.

Two federal laws—the Help America Vote Act, passed in 2002, and the 1993 National Voter Registration Act—require states to update their voter registration rolls and clear ineligible registrants.

Maine, a state with one of the most closely watched Senate races in the nation, had 3,181 dead people on its voter rolls, according to a Help America Vote Act complaint filed Wednesday by the Public Interest Legal Foundation. That’s down from 18,000 after a July review, but still a significant tally. The election watchdog found 693 duplicate registrations in the state. 

The foundation’s data show North Carolina still has 1,377 dead people on its voter rolls — down significantly from more than 12,000 names in 2020.

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s office has removed 691,824 deceased voters since 2019. The Department of Homeland Security said the SAVE system found 59,774 dead people on the voter registration rolls in Ohio since 2024, when the state began using the system. Ohio has a competitive governor’s race and Senate race this year.  

“We have 99% of deceased voters off the rolls,” LaRose told the Daily Signal. He added, “Ohio voter rolls are more accurate than at any point in the 220-year history of the state.” 

The Public Interest Legal Foundation found Ohio and Iowa — both with competitive Senate races — had among the most pronounced drops in the names of deceased voters. Ohio went from 7,368 dead people on the rolls in 2020 to just 32 as of last September. Iowa went from 3,000 to 25 over that time.

The Homeland Security July memo said Tennessee identified 37,850 deceased individuals through the SAVE system. The state says the voters have been removed.  

“Tennessee has submitted data through the enhanced SAVE system multiple times prior to the July memo,” Ben Hill, spokesman for Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett, told the Daily Signal. “The deceased voter figures are over an extended period. Any deceased voter identified through these efforts was removed from the voter registration system in accordance with state and federal law.” 

In other Senate battlegrounds, the Department of Homeland Security noted that Texas, with a closely-watched Senate race, had identified 111,573 deceased people on its rolls. Alicia Pierce, spokeswoman for Texas Secretary of State Rob Howden, has said if the state determines voters are ineligible, that information is sent back to counties to investigate.

Georgia, which has close contests for both governor and Senate, identified 42,776 deceased people, according to the July memo. Robert Sinners, spokesman for Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, confirmed the DHS numbers, and informed counties about ineligible voters. 

Kansas, with an unusually close Senate contest for a red state, has 10,197 dead people registered, according to the agency’s memo. John Milburn, spokesman for Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab, said the federal numbers do not match what Kansas has. 

“Voters are continually removed in compliance with the provisions of Kansas and Federal Law,” Milburn told the Daily Signal.

Spokespersons for top election officials in North Carolina and Michigan didn’t respond to inquiries for this story.

The Public Interest Legal Foundation findings from 2020 that 349,773 apparently deceased registered voters across 41 states with the large states of New York, Texas, Michigan, Florida and California accounting for a majority.  Since the 2020 study, several states have made significant improvements, according to PILF numbers provided to The Daily Signal.

Though, even some of these states have shown improvement, according to the foundation’s research.  

Michigan—with another closely watched Senate races—had 25,975 dead people on the rolls in 2020. That has come down to 1,745, according to PILF.

Some past Senate races have come down to just a few hundred votes. A 1998 Nevada Senate race was decided by 401 votes, a 2002 South Dakota Senate race was decided by 524 votes, and a 2008 Senate contest in Minnesota was decided by 312 votes. A 2016 Senate election in New Hampshire was decided by 1,017 votes.

PILF data show some improvement even in California.  In 2025, the foundation found 14,800 deceased registered voters. Today, that number stands at 9,800. That’s still almost 10,000 dead poeple on the voter rolls by Election Day.  

The foundation’s President J. Christian Adams noted among the worst examples of ineligible registered voters was a 105-year-old woman, someone whose birth year was listed as 1841, and a Pennsylvania man arrested for voting in 2020 on behalf of his wife, who died in 2013 .  

Earlier this month, a federal grand jury indicted a New Mexico man who allegedly attempted to cast an absentee ballot in the name of his wife.  

Several convictions have occurred since. Most recently, a Minnesota woman in October 2025 pleaded guilty to voting on behalf of her dead mother in 2024. A Florida man was convicted in December 2023 for voting in the name of his dead father in 2020; an Arizona woman pleaded guilty in 2022 for voting in the name of her dead mother in the 2020 eleciton;  a Nevada man pleaded guilty in November 2021 for voting on behalf of his deceased wife in 2020; and a Colorado woman pleaded guilty in 2017 to voting in 2013 on behalf of her dead father. 

The Heritage Foundation Election Fraud database found 54 convictions for election crimes related to misusing a deceased person’s name, mostly voting, but also including forging a deceased person’s signature for election purposes.

“My new conclusion on this is that this stuff never fixes. It keeps showing up and people keep slipping through the cracks,” Adams told the Daily Signal.  

California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington that have all-mail elections are some of the worst examples.

“California shouldn’t be mailing out ballots to deceased people,” Adams said. “You don’t want to erect new vulnerabilities in elections that are already vulnerable.”  

More from this network:
Domains for Sale · GOTPeople.org · TheDSAPlatform · The Truth About Socialism

Donate to GOTPeople.org