The ghost drivers are alive.

So says Registrar of Motor Vehicles Erin Deveney, who sent a letter to Auditor Suzanne Bump on Thursday disputing an audit that said the RMV had issued 1,900 licenses to dead people.

The letter lays out clearly, for the first time, the steps the RMV took to verify that those licensees were, in fact, alive. It also identifies the flaws in Bump's methodology.

Deveney called on Bump to "take the appropriate steps to address publicly the inaccurate findings" in the audit.

"The inaccuracies contained in this report, especially any continued assertion that the RMV issued over 1,900 driver's licenses in the name of deceased individuals, call into question the integrity of the RMV, and call into question the methodology that your office utilized in conducting this audit," Deveney wrote.

Bump responded, in a letter to Deveney, that her office stands by the audit. "The accuracy of an audit relies on the data that is provided and the level of cooperation of an auditee," Bump wrote. "Our audit was based on data provided by the Registry of Motor Vehicles. As such, we stand by the findings of the audit."

Bump's office released an audit last week that found that between July 1, 2014, through Dec. 31, 2016, the RMV issued 1,905 licenses to individuals after their dates of death. Most of the death dates were between 1988 and 2010, with some as early as 1962.

RMV officials immediately disputed the report, and Gov. Charlie Baker asserted, "Everybody on that list is alive."

But both state agencies defended the methodologies they used to determine who was alive and dead.

According to Deveney, the RMV has since reviewed nearly half of the 1,905 files. It found file photos of those individuals, some of which were taken after the date the audit said the people had died. RMV staff also personally know some of the individuals, and know that they are alive.

The letter says Bump's staff, in discussions this week, "admitted that the conclusion that the RMV issued 1,905 licenses after the date of death was reached incorrectly."

The letter said Bump's audit was based on matching Social Security numbers between a state database and a Social Security death master file. But the state database included some old or incorrect Social Security numbers, which were later corrected in the state system. Bump did not check names and dates of birth, data that was available to her, when a Social Security number matched that of someone who was dead.

"Your finding that the RMV issued over 1,900 driver's licenses to individuals after their dates of death is inaccurate and I am requesting you address this immediately," Deveney wrote.