Among Voters in N.J.
- G.O.P. Sees Dead People
By DAVID W. CHEN,
NYTimes on the Web, September 16, 2005
TRENTON, Sept. 15 - The joke
has long been that dead people vote in Hudson County, New Jersey's legendary
enclave of machine politics. But now the joke may be on New Jersey,
according to a new analysis of voter records by the state's Republican Party.
Comparing information from county voter registration lists, Social Security
death records and other public information, Republican officials announced on
Thursday that 4,755 people who were listed as deceased appear to have voted in
the 2004 general election. Another 4,397 people who were registered to
vote in more than one county appeared to have voted twice, while 6,572 who were
registered in New Jersey and in one of five other states selected for analysis
voted in each state.
At a news conference at the State House, Tom Wilson, the state's party chairman,
took pains to say that the analysis did not look at voters' party affiliation.
He also said that the party was not accusing voters of committing fraud,
suggesting instead that someone else may have exploited their names without
their knowledge.
Mr. Wilson said the analysis did not examine whether any of the alleged
fraudulent voting tipped a close race in 2004, but he said that it was
imperative that all future races -- including this year's race for governor
between Douglas R. Forrester, a Republican, and Senator Jon S. Corzine, a
Democrat -- be as clean as possible.
Mr. Wilson and other Republican leaders also criticized Attorney General Peter
C. Harvey, the state's top election official, for failing to enforce the law,
and demanded in a 10-page letter on Thursday that Mr. Harvey investigate the
state's voting patterns.
"This is going to be an extremely close election," said Mr. Wilson, disregarding
recent polls showing that Mr. Corzine's double-digit lead in percentage points
is widening. "We need to make sure that the process that we have to allow
people to vote is fair, is honest, and the integrity of which is so strong that
the outcome can't be disputed. We don't have that today."
When asked about the Republicans' findings, Lee Moore, a spokesman for Mr.
Harvey, said that "the letter will be reviewed" and that "a determination will
be made as to what course of action will be called for, if any."
Ingrid Reed, director of the Eagleton New Jersey Project at Rutgers University,
said that she needed to review the analysis more carefully. But the
potential for mistakes was certainly not insignificant, she said, pointing to
mishaps in Florida in 2000, and in Ohio and Washington in 2004, and because New
Jersey has not yet finished centralizing its voting lists, in accordance with
the 2002 Help America Vote Act.
But Democrats dismissed the findings. Indeed, they were quick to note that
a federal court had castigated Republicans for voter suppression tactics in the
1980's.
"If any investigation is needed, it should be done the right way, not the
Republican way," said Richard McGrath, a spokesman for the state Democratic
Party. "The Republican Party is infamous for voter suppression tactics, so
they occupy the moral low ground on this issue."
Republicans analyzed voter records from the state's 21 counties, and matched
those voters whose first and last names and dates of birth matched in more than
one county. Of that group, nearly 4,400 of those matches voted in two
counties. Middlesex County had, by far, the greatest number of potential
duplicate voters, with 2,299, according to the analysis.
The Republicans then applied a similar method to see whether someone registered
in New Jersey was also registered in one of five states: New York,
Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and South Carolina.
A similar approach was used in trying to match death records with voting
records. Bergen County had the greatest number of matches, with 609,
followed by Monmouth County, with 450. Hudson County was tied for sixth
with the Republican bastion of Morris County, with 298 potential dead voters
apiece.
For all of data analysis on Thursday, however, an element of political theater
could not be avoided. Mr. Forrester showed up unannounced at the news
conference and sought to link the findings to broader questions about the
integrity of Democrats, as well as his opponent.
"I believe that the pattern should be crystal clear by now: New Jersey is
not going to get the change that it needs with Jon Corzine," Mr. Forrester said.
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