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A French cemetery is shown in this file photo. In New Jersey, a lawmaker wants the votes of people who cast mail-in ballots but died before Election Day to be counted

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TRENTON — It's been Jersey political lore for more than a century in places like Hudson County: People have declared "I see dead people voting."

Now a state lawmaker wants to allow the dearly departed's votes to be counted from all over New Jersey — in a limited way.

Assemblyman Ronald Dancer (R-Ocean) on Tuesday introduced legislation (A4236) that says people who cast mail-in ballots but die before polls close on Election Day would no longer have their votes thrown-out.



Current law states that "whenever the county board receives evidence that a mail-in voter who has marked and forwarded a mail-in ballot has died before the opening of the polls on the day of the election, the ballot shall be rejected by the board (of elections)."

Dancer's bill would require the board to actually count it "as a valid ballot if the voter otherwise would have been qualified to vote."

Dancer said his original intention was for the bill's provisions only to apply to active duty military members. He said he got the idea because his son-in-law did tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Of course we prayed for him every day to come home safely and praise God he did," Dancer said. "That gave me the thought.. He's been in two war zones. I believe strongly in making sure he had a mail-in ballot to vote."

But while drafting the bill, Dancer said research by the Office of Legislative Services revealed a proposal in Indiana that expanded the right to everyone who casts an absentee ballot and then dies — not just those in the military.

"I felt strongly that what Indiana did, I think New Jersey should follow. That's kind of the genesis of the bill," Dancer said.

A 2004 report in USA Today noted that an untold number of "ghost votes" were at the time counted in several states that allow early voting — including Florida, California, Texas, Tennessee, Ohio and West Virginia. The article noted that such votes could swing big elections in some of those states, where candidates are sometimes separated by just a few hundred votes.



New Jersey allows voters to cast mail-in ballots early for any reason or in-person at county clerks' offices up to 45 days before an election. But their votes are not actually counted until Election Night, Essex County Clerk Chris Durkin said.



Durkin said that if Dancer wants to allow dead peoples' mail-in ballots to count, he should work on creating an early voting system in which votes are counted immediately.



"As I understand, the concept of the law today is since we do not have early voting in New Jersey and there's only Election Day voting that's either vote by mail or voting at the polls," Durkin said. "That's when the votes count. I would think you should change the law to early voting in order for your vote to count."



It's unclear if the bill has any chance of advancing or if it's DOA. A spokesman for Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto (D-Hudson), who decides which bills get posted for a vote, said only that it will "be reviewed." It's also unclear how many mail-in ballots have been tossed because the voter has died. Nora Walsh, a spokeswoman for the State Division of Elections, said the state rejected 5,500 mail-in ballots in last November's election, but her agency doesn't keep that data on how many were tossed because the voters had died. Most, she said, were probably rejected for lack of signature or because they were received after polls closed.

Durkin, for his part, said he's on board with allowing the counting of dead peoples' votes if the early voting system is adopted.



"I feel that the votes should count. Their voices should be heard... Even in death," he said. "Guarantees in life will not just be death and taxes, but also a vote."

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Matt Friedman may be reached at mfriedman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MattFriedmanSL. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.