Investigation shows votes cast under registrations of the dead

Frank C. Smith Sr., according to county records, cast a ballot in the special election last year for Jasper County sheriff.

Smith worked as a truck driver and raised a family on the values of hard work and civic participation. But as his family will tell you, he didn’t vote for sheriff last year.
“He couldn’t have. He was cremated,” said his wife, Martha Smith.
Martha Smith said she and her husband were married for nearly 40 years before his death on July 12, 2000. She said they would frequently travel together when her husband went on the road.
She said things just haven’t been the same since she lost her husband, and she “can’t imagine why the county would be saying he voted.”

“Somebody must have made a mistake,” she said. “That just doesn’t make any sense.”

Frank Smith Sr. was living in Neosho at the time of his death, but had previously lived at 322 S. Liberty St. in Webb City. He was never removed from the Webb City voting rolls. A ballot cast in the 2003 election shows that someone voted under his name, although the street address was scratched out and changed to 319 Liberty St.
A Globe investigation found at least six people in the Joplin area who state and county records list as having voted even though they were deceased. Hundreds more dead people apparently remain on the area voting rolls, including some who have been dead for nearly a decade.
A Globe analysis of Missouri voter registration records and death records showed at least 11,700 people statewide who have died yet still appear eligible to vote in November’s election.
Of the more than 350 such names in Jasper, Newton and McDonald counties, six have been identified in state and county voting records — by name, date of birth and Social Security number — as having voted after their deaths

Six dead voters

Bertha Shepard, of Reeds, died of a sudden heart attack in June 1998. But according to Jasper County records, that didn’t stop someone from voting under her name in the general election that November.

Ralph McRae, of Webb City, also showed up for that election, voter records show. But, McRae died one year earlier at the Webb City Health and Rehab Center.

In all, four dead people were listed as having voted in Jasper County, and two in McDonald County, in five separate elections between 1998 and 2003.

Newton County records did not show any such voters.

Voters who did not have a date of birth listed or who had slight variations in the spelling of their names would have escaped the Globe’s analysis.

Ron Mosbaugh, Jasper County clerk, said he is not at all surprised that dead people remain on the voting rolls.

“They probably are,” he said. “That doesn’t surprise me. If nobody tells us they’re dead, how are we supposed to know?”

But Mosbaugh said he was taken aback when he learned that ballots had been cast under the signatures of people who were dead.

Yet, Smith’s name is clearly signed next to his voter identification number, and a small sticker next to his name contains the initials “PP” and “BS,” those of the two election judges. One of the judges also wrote the ballot number — “269” — for the 2003 special election.

“That person definitely voted,” Mosbaugh said. “At least, somebody did.”

The explanation offered is that the somebody may have been Frank C. Smith — Junior.

Smith is survived by a son of the same name, and Martha Smith said she thinks maybe her son or the poll worker got confused and had Frank Jr. vote in Frank Sr.’s name.

Mosbaugh agrees.

“I don’t think he realized he was doing anything wrong,” Mosbaugh said. “And by all rights, the judges screwed up — they should have sent him to his original polling place.”

That’s because Frank C. Smith Jr., who lives at 110 N. Ball St. in Webb City, was registered under a different address and in a different precinct than his deceased father. Voters who appear at the wrong polling place are supposed to be directed to the right one, and should not be allowed to cast a ballot

But Frank Smith Jr.’s name and address, written in longhand, does appear in the back of the roster in the precinct where his father lived. And while his signature does appear next to the name, there is no sticker or the judges’ initials by the name, indicating that in all likelihood no ballot was given to him under that signature.

“The father has a sticker, but not the son,” said Mosbaugh. “So no, by all accounts the son did not vote twice, as far as we can tell.”

The other handwritten voters at the back of the roster did have stickers and initials by their names.

Mosbaugh’s guess is that Frank Smith Jr. told the judges he had moved and they wrote his name in at the back of the book.

Frank C. Smith Jr. told the Globe he remembers voting for Sheriff.

“I even voted for a Democrat,” he said.

Smith said he doesn’t remember there being any confusion or problems at the polls, but he was definite in saying that he cast only one ballot.

“I have my own registration card, why would I do that?” Smith said.

Mosbaugh said he has now removed Frank Smith Sr.’s name from the voting rolls after the matter was brought to his attention by the Globe and he was able to independently confirm his death.

Tossing the books

Jim Gardner, with the Missouri attorney general’s office, said voter fraud is a felony punishable by five years in prison and a fine of $2,500 to $10,000 per offense.

“With that type of felony, you also permanently lose your voting rights,” Gardner said.

In Missouri, those convicted of other types of felonies can petition to have their voting rights reinstated.
One problem, though, is that election authorities are not above making mistakes in their record keeping. If a person is listed in the system as having voted, that entry could have been recorded by accident, as may have happened in the Smith case.

“Mistakes do happen,” said Newton County Clerk Kay Baum. “That’s why we hold on to the original rosters.”

The paper rosters contain the signatures of all the voters who showed up at the polls to cast ballots in a particular election.

But again, there’s a problem. While Newton County holds on to its paper rosters indefinitely, Jasper and McDonald counties — along with a number of others in Missouri — do not. Instead they rely on the county’s computer voting records

“The law says we only need to keep them for 22 months,” Mosbaugh said. “We just don’t have the room, so after that they are destroyed.”

That means the only paper verification of possible voter fraud is shredded after less than two years. It also means one may never be able to prove an innocent mistake.

Federal and state laws allow counties to throw out their poll books 22 months after a federal or state election, and municipal election rosters can be discarded after one year.

But that’s only the minimum requirement. Counties can keep them longer if they choose.

“I get the feeling a lot of counties hold on to them longer,” said Gayla Vandelicht, with the Missouri secretary of state’s office. “I’ll have people call and say, ‘This election was 20 years ago. Can I throw my books out now?’”

Best defense

McDonald County Clerk Joye Helm said her policy echoes Jasper County’s, simply because of the “space issue.”

“We only have a tiny office here,” she said. “We just don’t have anywhere to store them (the paper rosters).”

As a result, it may never be known why Willard D. Wilks, of Lanagan, for example, is listed as having voted in the 2002 municipal election there. Computer records show he voted, but Wilks died in August 2000.

“It could be as simple as somebody signing on the wrong line, so it was entered incorrectly,” Helm said. “Our records say he voted, but I guess we’ll never know.”

Helm said sometimes the only good defense against voter fraud is the poll workers themselves. She said that especially in smaller communities in McDonald County, those administering the elections usually know most of the voters who come to their precinct personally.

That is precisely why Helm knows Ardella Hixenbaugh, of Anderson, could not have voted in November 2001, only days after her death.

“That has to be a mistake in the records,” she said. “This lady was well known around here, so nobody could have gone into the polling place to fake being Ardella Hixenbaugh. The election judges have been there for decades.”

‘How can we know they’re dead?’

Larger counties, however, cannot count on that personal contact to ensure voters are who they say they are. Mosbaugh, the Jasper County clerk, said that if someone shows up with the correct paperwork, there is not much election officials can do.

“We get thousands of voters. How do we know one from the other?” Mosbaugh said. “If somebody comes in and shows an ID, how can we know they’re dead?”

Further complicating the matter is that the law does not require any kind of photo identification. A simple gas bill is enough to verify one’s identity.

“If it has your name and address on it, it’s all we can require,” Mosbaugh said.

The push nationwide over the past decade has been to make it easier, not more difficult, to vote. Vandelicht, with the secretary of state’s office, said the biggest concern has been to prevent voters from being disenfranchised.

This has resulted in a number of new laws — from “motor voter” in the 1990s to the Help America Vote Act passed in the wake of the 2000 election — that give every break possible to the voter.

But a side effect has been an unprecedented swell in voter rolls, including the dead. Voters whose names previously were purged after a few years if they didn’t vote now must be kept on the rolls for as long as four years if there is any question as to their eligibility.

Currently, Missouri counties receive the names of people who died with an address in that county. If someone moves shortly before — or even years before — death, the original county will not be notified, officials say.

So if someone shows up to vote for president in November claiming to be one of the 11,700 dead people apparently on the Missouri voting rolls, there may not be much anyone can do, said Vandelicht.

“It’s really only the threat of prosecution that keeps people from trying that ... the risk you could be charged with a felony,” she said. “That, and of course keeping your voting rolls clean. That goes a long way to prevent it in the first place.”

The state is moving to implement a new election system next fall that officials at the county and state level say should drastically reduce the problem.

That system, known as Maximus, will link all county election authorities to a central database, and they can instantly find out if a voter is registered in another county, dead or in prison.

Until then, officials acknowledge that the rolls will have a fair amount of dead people, felons and those who have long since moved away.

Fern Wright, of Joplin, has been dead since 1996 — yet she is still registered to vote in Jasper County.

But if someone by that name — or any other — shows up at the polls this November, county officials say they’ll be watching.

“We’re going to be paying very close attention in this election to make sure nobody is voting who shouldn’t be,” Mosbaugh said.

Wright’s name already may have slipped by once. The only existing county records list her as voting in 1999. The paper roster for that election has since been destroyed.