The Statistics of Dead Voters

According to this article, Texas has twelve counties where there are more registered voters than the voting age population.

This is hardly news, as certain areas of Texas – especially in deep South Texas – have had a hallowed tradition of allowing dead people to vote. And it’s not a practice that’s limited to Texas. According to the article, several others states display the same phenomenon:

• Alabama – 7 counties
• Indiana – 12 counties
• Kentucky – 12 counties
• Mississippi – 17 counties
• South Dakota – 17 counties

However, this is yet another case where statistics are a bit misleading. If you compare the total number of counties in each state with those where the voter rolls apparently contain a lot of dead people (and other non-eligible people such as felons or illegal immigrants), Texas looks a lot better. Here’s the same list showing the percentage of counties that fall into this category:

• Alabama – 10%
• Indiana – 13%
• Kentucky – 10%
• Mississippi – 21%
• South Dakota – 27%
• Texas – 5%

So, we see that Texas is, in fact, something of an underachiever in this area.

Note: Here’s the original report by the Washington Times