AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - Alegria Arce Hibbetts of Austin got a letter in late March saying that she might be dead.
Or more specifically, the Texas secretary of state's Texas Election Administration Management system indicated she was a "possible deceased voter." She had 30 days to prove otherwise, and she wasn't sure how to do that - the response form allowed only for a family member to sign off on her death.
There was nowhere to check "I'm alive," said Hibbetts, 74, who lives just north of the University of Texas. "I don't know where they got that information."
The letter was one of thousands sent to voters across Texas as part of a new effort by the secretary of state's office to remove dead people from the voter rolls. Two weeks ago, the state sent a list of the possibly deceased to each county, leaving local officials to find out who was still living. While some county officials did further research on the names, Travis County simply mailed out letters to all 140 people the state listed as "possible deceased voter."
The county learned of the error last week after Hibbetts complained and the voter registrar's office realized more information was included on the state list. It sent out apology letters April 1.
The renewed push to purge voter rolls of dead voters comes as state legislators debate proposed voter ID legislation and illustrates the lengths to which state officials already go to ensure the integrity of the ballot box, starting with maintaining accurate lists of registered voters. It's a process county with which officials are still wrestling.
"There's always that balance with someone's right to vote," said Randall Dillard, director of communications for the secretary of state's office. "But our responsibility is to keep the rolls as clean as possible."
The latest problem began when the secretary of state, at the state auditor's urging, cross-checked its database of 12.8 million registered voters against a list of all Texans who have died since 1964, the farthest complete records go back, Dillard said.
State and county offices update voter rolls daily, adding new registrations and removing the ineligible, but this was the first time the state did a complete sweep for the deceased.
If a computer matched a full name, last four digits of a Social Security number and date of birth with those of someone who died, the system automatically purged that voter from the rolls, Dillard said. But if the computer could match only the last four digits of the Social Security number and date of birth, that voter was flagged as a "weak match," and the name was forwarded to the county.
The secretary of state's office sent 9,932 "weak matches" to county voter registrars. There were 140 in Travis County, including some duplicates, but only 47 of those people were actually dead, said Dolores Lopez, director of elections for Travis County.
Although the county checked the information given by the state, it only verified the criteria that created the match in the first place. Officials did not go name by name down the list because they didn't realize the electronic spreadsheet contained names for comparison, Lopez said.
"We're not trying to take anyone off the voter roles," said Nelda Wells Spears, tax assessor and voter registrar for Travis County. "We want to keep them on."
Many of the larger counties in Texas keep their own voter databases and did additional fact-checking on the weak matches presented by the state. They include the state's two largest counties, Harris and Dallas.
"I'm always kind of dubious of matches," said George Hammerlein, director of elections for Harris County. "I know mine are good, but ... I'd rather be yelled at for leaving a few dead people on the rolls than taking a few living people off."
As for the "dear family" letters, as Hammerlein calls them, those could use some tweaking too, Lopez said.
Counties send the state-prescribed letters in English and Spanish, and the registrar's phone number is listed on the letter, but as Hibbetts noted, the response form assumes the voter is dead.
"It's not a friendly form. I will say that," Lopez said. "When we have a little bit of time, we want to go back to the secretary of state. We want to make it a little easier to respond."
Hibbetts, who received her apology letter last week, said she's just happy to be alive. "I think I'm a little sensitive about being dead," she said. "I just think what would happen to people that would be scared by that."
(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
