GOP Lawmaker Introduces Bill to Purge Voter Rolls of Deceased People

A roll of "I Voted" stickers on a table inside a polling station at a Ross Valley fire station in San Anselmo, Calif., on June 5, 2018. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

A U.S. House proposal that seeks to clean up state voter rolls following allegations of deceased individuals casting absentee ballots in the 2020 election was introduced by Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas) last week.

The bill, called the You Must Be Alive to Vote Act and which currently has eight co-sponsors, would withhold some federal funds to counties that don’t annually check their voter lists against death records, with the goal of purging them of any individuals found to be deceased.

“The right to vote is one of the most vital pillars of our democracy, the foundations of which are election integrity and confidence in our democratic processes,” Babin said in a Dec. 2 statement. “The ease with which someone is able to steal the ballot of a deceased person and cast an illegitimate vote should disturb, alarm, and outrage every American citizen, no matter what side of the aisle they sit on.

“To protect our democratic process and Americans’ faith in our elections, we must ensure that deceased individuals are not allowed to remain on state voter rolls.”

President Donald Trump and others have alleged that absentee and mail-in ballots were cast by dead people in the Nov. 3 election.

In a 46-minute video posted on Facebook on Dec. 2, Trump said, “Many states, such as Nevada and California, sent millions of live ballots to every person on their voter rolls whether those individuals had requested ballots or not, whether they were dead or alive.”

“This colossal expansion of mail-in voting opened the flood gates to massive fraud. It’s a widely known fact that the voting rolls are packed with people who are not lawfully eligible to vote, including those who are deceased, have moved out of their state, and even noncitizens of our country,” the president said.

Babin, in an interview on One America News, lamented the need for legislation that would expressly fight the “dead voter” phenomenon.

“You would think it would be unnecessary to have a bill like this. I mean, it goes without saying you should be alive before you get to vote,” Babin told the network. “We’ve uncovered some fraudulent plans to register a bunch of dead people to vote down in South Florida, and it’s the easiest thing in the world for these local counties to purge their voter list of deceased individuals.

“All they have to do is to go to the Social Security system and cross-check against their deceased Social Security recipients on their list and then purge them off the voter list.”

Meanwhile, elections officials in states facing allegations of voter fraud and other election-related legal challenges brought by the Trump legal team and others have insisted that there’s no widespread voter fraud.