The guy makes the stupidest argument I've ever seen, and he's getting attention for it. Bizarre.
He argues that there are dead people on the voter rolls in West Virginia and that they are Democrats, and that Democrats support that dead people are on the rolls, and only the recently elected Republican is purging the rolls.
Now let's break down the argument.
He starts with a charming story about the ancient Greek battle at Thermopylae and several hundred thousand soldiers dying of plague. Doesn't seem too relevant to dead people on voter rolls, but I suppose it could be considered catchy.
He compares the plague deaths in ancient Greece affecting the battle with the purging of the 6000 from WV rolls affecting elections. He must be assuming that all the dead people are Democrats, and all of the dead people's registration was used in election fraud.
From the orginal article, there's a bit less to the story than our hapless pundit believes.
There are indeed an alleged 6000 dead on the rolls (give or take). It's been difficult to purge them in the past, not because of a giant Democratic plot, but because
"This year, for the first time, the secretary of state has been able to cross-reference voter registration lists with death statistics provided by the state Bureau of Vital Statistics."
There's a little math to the story too. I did the math with handy dandy Excel, the numbers are from the article. WV's total registered voter population is 1130088. From the article, 57% of those are Democrats, or 644150. That leaves 485937 as registered Republicans. If we assume that all of the 6000 are Democrat and subtract them, that leaves the Democrats with 638150 remaining (presumably) live voters. That still leaves the Democrats with a comfortable margin of 152212 to swing any election, so I'm not sure there is much of a motive for widespread zombie voting unless, due to gerrymandering, there is some other dynamic involved.
A quote from the article, "evidence shows the possibility that more than one voted in the recent May primary." Wow, out of 6000 more than 1 may have voted in the primary. Of course, the primary is party-centric (at least, I'm assuming it is in WV) so no damage to the Republicans here. Call in the FBI!
Another quote,
"While saying Ireland’s office will aggressively pursue such offenses, Beakes said some of those marked as voting might be simple clerical mistakes.
We cannot disenfranchise any voter that may be'" erroneously flagged as deceased,” he said."
After reading the article, I'm convinced that WV may have a few dead people voting, perhaps, but that they are few and far between and unlikely to sway an election. I would be astonished if there weren't a few dead people (and pets, and children, and mentally incompetent, and space aliens) voting in all sorts of elections everywhere during all times and all centuries. I would also be astonished if this practice were restricted to one party. Show me some evidence of wide spread voter fraud that affects an election and I'll be the first one to show up, pitchfork in hand, with the other townsfolk.
To return briefly to the blog from the guy making the outlandish and paranoid claims for one last bad argument.
He seems to think the NYTimes is in on the scam. He refers to an editorial piece about Republicans in Ohio and Florida who are (allegedly) trying to "shut down voter registration drives." Ohio and Florida both had issues with votes that did affect an election! I'll let you read the NYTimes article yourself and judge whether or not the evidence presented there is more or less credible than our man from WV.
