Back in Arkansas, we all knew the score. The hill country voted Republican. Blacks did not, nor did most of the delta. But the dead always voted Democrat. In many states the rights of dead voters are respected, but not, apparently, in South Dakota. From Fox News:
If you vote by mail, but die before Election Day, does your vote count? It depends on where you lived.
Oregon counts ballots no matter what happens to the voter. So does Florida. But in South Dakota, if you die before the election, so does your vote...
Take the case of Florence Steen, an ailing 88-year-old grandmother born before women had the right to vote. One of her last wishes was to vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton. She wanted to be part of history, said her daughter Kathy Krause.
Steen was confined to a hospice bed in Rapid City, S.D., when she was brought an absentee ballot weeks before the June 3 primary. She studied it a long time, then marked her choice with such determination her daughter feared she would poke through the paper.
Steen died on Mother’s Day. With a heavy heart, her daughter took the ballot and dropped it in a mailbox. “In my mind, her vote counted,” Krause said. “My mother believed she had voted for a woman to be president.”
But the women down at the county courthouse told Krause the ballot had to be tossed because state law declared a voter must be alive on Election Day.
So Krause passed that word to the Clinton campaign. And Clinton drew great applause when she told the story in her concession speech four days after the South Dakota primary.
Now I am on record regarding the legal rights of zombies and vampires, so I wonder that I was not called about this. Zombies are soulless corpses, without personality or legal status. If Ms. Steen had lurched to the polls muttering "brains! Must eat brains!" and then voted, her vote should not have counted.
But since she was alive when she voted, her vote should obviously count. Ms. Clinton is right to complain, and the South Dakota law should be changed.
Recent Comments