That seems like a very, very easy charge to back up if it is true. We know the date the ballots are mailed, and we know the dates of death. Are there even five cases where a person died before receiving a ballot and the ballot was returned?

I don't know. Who's checking? Anyone?

Yes, it is pretty obvious. Unless Congress passed something special for this case, it would be handled like any other financial transaction underway as part of an estate. And the recipients of the estate could obviously spend it too.

Sure ballots probably get sent to the recently deceased -- the SOS office isn't trolling statewide obituaries to prune them as fast as possible. But voting? For the ballot to be voted, someone would have to forge the signature. Got some proof of those frauds out there?

It's like you're suggesting that dead people are driving because, after all, their driver's licenses haven't been canceled yet!

Vote by mail is wide open to fraud. And who's checking? Not you. Not anyone. You're all too busy baaaaaa-ing about how wonderful it is.

For the ballot to be voted, someone would have to forge the signature.

And that doesn't happen? Typical Oregon government nonsense.

Funny that you worry about vote-by-mail fraud, which is certainly possible but has such an extraordinarily low payoff (and high risk). The fraud that worries me is by the counting-machine companies and by partisan election officials. The movie "Uncounted" is quite disturbing, as is the book "Black Box Voting" by Johns Hopkins Comp Sci professor Ari Rubin. I wish Vicki Walker had been nominated/elected for SoS ...

http://www.purgatorius.org/Archives/2005Apr-Jun/Touch%20Screen%20Voting.html

Sorry, brain fart, I mixed up the titles (and the guy's name). Avi Rubin's book is "Brave New Ballot," Harris's book is "Black Box Voting." Both are worth reading.

http://www.bravenewballot.org/

The elections office gets reports back from morgues, funeral homes, death certificates, etc. What can be difficult is when someone dies out of state.

However, if you vote your ballot the day it arrives, mail it in, and die a few days later, your ballot will not be counted. I don't know how that is handled in other states that have various forms of early and absentee voting. But I know from working at Mult Co Elections that this is the case in Oregon.

More troublesome than the dead vote is the ease with which one member of the household can now make all the voting decisions. As long as the official "voter" signs the envelope, anyone can fill out the ballot and mail it in.

I love vote by mail because I hate going out to the polls (call me lazy). That said the system is ripe for the plucking and I'm sure has been many times. Oregon isn't so special it doesn't have the problem like most other states. Toss in a SoS that is to busy doing Gores bidding to do his own job and I'll gaurantee you there is fraud.

More troublesome than the dead vote is the ease with which one member of the household can now make all the voting decisions. As long as the official "voter" signs the envelope, anyone can fill out the ballot and mail it in.

Just as bad are the social workers that help people vote after they are too old to do it for themselves. My wife works in a nursing home and has seen people assist in filling out the ballots for patients who are too demented to remember the year anymore.

The social workers dutifully ask them questions and try to interpret their answers (which often don't relate to the question posed). Maybe they get it right most of the time, but the possibility of biased interpretations is more worrisome to me than low voter turnout in the Alzheimer units.