Government incompetence

Dead celebs still on a (voting) roll

By AARON SHORT

Dead man voting.

Legendary CBS anchor Walter Cronkite, New Yorker editor William Shawn and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Frank McCourt are no longer with us -- but the city Board of Elections lists them as eligible voters.

Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers -- including movie stars Lena Horne and Natasha Richardson and beloved restaurateur Elaine Kaufman -- are also on the voting rolls long after they died.

And not only could this cost the city millions of dollars in postage and printing fees, but it could also lead to election fraud.

While newly registered voters must take some form of ID to the polls, longtime voters are just asked to verify addresses and sign a sheet of paper -- making it easy to impersonate a dead voter.

And all those dead voters add up. To run for public office, one must first collect signatures from 5 percent of the district's registered voters. That thousands of dead voters are still included in the count makes that much more difficult, especially for newcomers challenging incumbents.

"The Board of Elections likes that -- because it is controlled by the party leaders and they don't want to see any challengers," said information-technology expert Bob McFeeley, an adviser to Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro.

Meanwhile, the Board of Elections and the city Campaign Finance Board often send mail -- including ballots -- to the deceased. The latter spent $5.4 million to send its voter guide to 7 million homes in 2009.

The city used to get a death list from the state and city health departments, but the law, changed in 2005, now requires only the state Board of Elections to get that list.