The title "Zombie Voters and Honesty in Politics" published on September 14 on the Texas Public Radio website, caught my eye not because of the newly resurrected zombie obsession but because I wanted to know if their vote counted. Turns out, dead people will not be voting in this upcoming Presidential election and people who the Texas Secretary of State's office thinks are possibly dead, might not understand that they can vote. Confusing? Maybe it's supposed to be.
The article written by David Martin Davies, explains why 77,000 notifications were sent out to Texas residents inquiring about their living status. That is, whether or not they are living. The Texas Secretary of State's office matched the Social Security Administration's death master file with the voter registration list and required counties to send letters and then to remove people from the voter registration list if they don't respond within 30 days. Don Sumners, the Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector and voter registrar, is refusing to remove these people from the voter registration list before the Presidential election stating "We can afford to wait until after the election before we start taking people off." Mr. Sumners reasons that it will be confusing for people but the Secretary of State's office thinks he is violating the law. Everybody loves to hate the tax man.
This is an important reading because we should be aware of possible voter suppression. Americans, some of whom started movements and organizations devoted to franchisement, cannot become immune to political corruption and issues like voter suppression.
