Ahead of special election, LA County voter receives ballot for person who died 31 years ago
A Los Angeles County registered voter received his ballot in the mail for next month's special election -- along with a ballot for a woman who died in 1994.
Some 5.8 million ballots have been mailed out to every registered voter in the county ahead of the Nov. 4 election.
L.A. resident Jeff Barry and his wife each received their respective ballot, along with a third ballot for someone they don't know, Winona M. McGuire.
"It was not the family from whom we bought the house last spring and I wasn't familiar with it and so I Googled it and I was a bit surprised by what I found," said Barry.
He discovered the person's name on the third ballot passed away back in 1994. Not knowing what to do with the ballot, Barry reached out to Eyewitness News who also verified that Winona M. McGuire has been dead for 31 years.
"I was just sort of bewildered as to how I received her ballot. it's not like she died a year or two ago. She died in L.A. County over 30 years ago and she's still on the voter rolls," said Barry.
At this point, there's no evidence Winona M. McGuire's name has been used to vote in L.A. county since her death. According to election officials, voter fraud remains very rare, not occurring at a level that would change an election result.
"When you vote and return that ballot, you have to sign a legal oath. We can check the signatures on those ballots before they're cleared for counting so there are protections. Forging a ballot is a felony offense so we take that very seriously and we would refer that to the district attorney," said L.A. County Registrar Dean Logan.
Logan says if you receive a ballot at your address that's addressed to someone else, you should write on the envelope - no longer resides here or voter not here and have it returned to sender. the county will then update their records.
"We can certainly verify if there's been voting history in that time period. We do get notifications from the state department of public health and from the social security administration about deaths, but sometimes that information is difficult to match to a record and we want to be very careful when you're talking about cancelling somebody's registration," said Logan.
Besides returning the ballot to the county, the registrar wants to hear specific information on a voter if you have that, especially if someone has passed away so they can begin the process of removing their voter registration.
