Absentee ballot still counts if voter dies before election - Plain Dealer

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The growing popularity of early voting raises the question of what happens when someone who casts an absentee ballot dies before Election Day.

Does the vote still count?

The answer, it seems, is yes, though Ohio election law does not specifically address the question and the Ohio Secretary of State's office issued a ruling only after receiving inquiries last week from The Plain Dealer. A survey by the newspaper found differing opinions among elections officials in some Northeast Ohio counties. The elections director in Medina County believed the ballot should be invalidated, while the Lorain elections chief said the vote should count.

Cuyahoga County Elections Director Jane Platten sought advice from the Ohio Secretary of State's office, and said she received conflicting opinions. At first, an attorney for the state office advised her that a ballot must not be counted if cast by someone who is not a qualified voter on Election Day.

But later another state election official overruled that and told her the ballot counts.

Matt McClellan, a spokesman for Secretary of State Jon Husted, told the newspaper Thursday that the fact Ohio law is silent on the matter means election officials should count a ballot even if cast by a voter who subsequently dies.

"If you cast a ballot and pass away, your ballot still counts," McClellan said.

Laws differ from state to state. In a well-publicized case in 2008, an 88-year-old South Dakota woman who supported Hillary Clinton for president voted absentee and died several weeks before the state's primary. The state law called for her vote to be nullified. But Florida law specifies that an absentee ballot is valid if the voter dies before the election.

In Ohio, the Secretary of State's office provides county elections boards each month with names of residents who have died. The boards use the lists, compiled by the Ohio Health Department, to update their voter rolls.

The Cuyahoga board last week received a list of 777 county residents who died over the past month.

"Fifty-two of those persons had requested a vote-by-mail ballot," Platten said. "We have not gotten a vote-by-mail ballot back from any of them."

Based on current trends, Cuyahoga is expecting early voting in person or by mail will account for about 46 percent of all votes cast in the Nov. 6 election. As of Wednesday, the board had received about 65,000 absentee ballots.