Broward Officials Stopped Scheme To Register Dead People As Voters

Investigators uncovered an attempt to register dozens of dead people as voters in South Florida, according to NBC Miami. Broward County officials claim someone in Columbia, South Carolina mailed 51 new voter applications to the county elections office in July. Broward is Florida's second most populous county.

Officials said no mail-in ballots were requested or cast under falsified IDs. Each application had the same neat handwriting, flagging the registrations as suspicious to elections officials. They turned them over to Broward state attorney's office.

NBC Miami said officials could not determine who mailed the registrations because there was no return address. The applications were received in 19 envelopes, as well. "Thirty of the 51 were verified by the state attorney's office as being deceased. The identities of the other 21 could not be verified by only date of birth and name," NBC Miami reported.

Five of the names were already in the voter database, but investigators said no ballots were requested. "At least three of the applications evaded detection and were added to the Broward voter rolls in July. Two of those people had died in June," NBC Miami added. Broward Supervisor Of Elections Pete Antonacci said voting under a false registration is difficult; you're required to show identification whether you vote in-person or by mail. He also said there's a lag time between when a voter dies and when elections officials are notified. The scammer likely took advantage of that lag time.

“This is an organized effort by someone who knew a little bit about Florida law but not a lot and had a scheme to either undermine the Florida registration system with fake voters or intended to vote 50 times,” Antonacci said.

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