After he was governor, Brendan Byrne used to make jokes about dead people voting — “I want to be buried in Hudson County so that I can remain active in politics” — but in reality, New Jersey takes very clear steps to ensure that the deceased don’t vote.
These days, it’s never been easier for dead people to vote. Election officials began mailing primary election ballots on April 22, and the state has three days of early voting. Morbid as it may be, roughly 200 New Jerseyans die every day, and some may have already voted before their passing.
New Jersey election law requires county election officials to pull vote-by-mail ballots for any voter who died before the polls opened at 6 AM this morning, as long as they are aware of the death.
The New Jersey Department of Health provided counties with their most recent list of deaths this morning, and election boards are supposed to identify any voter who cast a ballot and then died before they begin their count. (There is no way to recall the vote of a person who used in-person early voting and then died before this morning.)
This is an ongoing process; the last list was generated on May 30.
Byrne’s joke, which probably didn’t help New Jersey’s reputation, was a hat to the urban legend that Jersey City Mayor Frank Hague used to send people out to vote using names off lists he obtained from local cemeteries.
In Nutley’s May 2020 non-partisan municipal election, two VBM voters died before Election Day. Their votes could have been consequential since the race for mayor – determined by who was the top vote-getter in a contest for five town commissioner seats – ended in a tie.
The process worked how it was supposed to, and election workers pulled the ballots before being counted. Had the ballots been separated from their envelopes, it would have been impossible to go back and readjust the results.
In a challenge to a 2021 regional school referendum that passed by two votes, Superior Court Judge Michael O’Neill invalidated the mail-in ballot cast by 93-year-old Julia S. Kerr that the Hunterdon County Board of Elections rejected because her signature didn’t match their records.
That turned out to be Kerr’s last vote; she died on December 5. By the time the judge heard the challenge in May 2022, he could no longer question Kerr about the authenticity of her signature.