For those college students taking an active role in the political process by casting absentee ballots during elections, most assume their vote will count — unless they die.
However, state Sen. Reggie Dupre, D-Houma, has authored a bill he will present to the Legislature allowing all absentee ballots to count, even if the person dies before the election.
This legislation was spurred by a September incident in which Terrebonne Parish president, Teddy Duhe, cast an absentee ballot for the October 2002 election. Duhe died two days later of a massive heart attack, Dupre said.
Because he was a well-known politician and his death was greatly publicized, Registrar of Voters Linda Rodrigue had to discount his vote because of a Louisiana law that has been in effect since 1921.
Currently, if a person casts an absentee ballot and dies before the election, his or her vote is not supposed to count, Rodrigue said. However, that law is harder to enforce than it sounds, she said.
There were 1,044 absentee Louisiana voters in the past election. Out of all of those voters, it would be impossible to compute how many may have died before the election date, Rodrigue said.
“You just can’t check 1,000 voters’ names every day,” she said.
The only way to keep track of who is alive and who is dead is to check the obituaries of all the major papers in the state, Rodrigue said.
What bothers Rodrigue is Duhe’s vote did not count because of the publicity surrounding it, and other lesser-known people’s votes who may have died could have counted.
“To me, that’s not fair,” she said.
Dupre’s main reason for creating this bill is to take the subjectivity out of the voting process, he said.
“In my opinion, election laws should be as fair and objective as possible,” Dupre said. “If they legally voted, it should count.”
He said the problem is more of a perception problem than reality, because people perceive people who have died as not being able to make decisions. And some University students agree.
“I think you should be living and breathing to vote,” said Allyson Titus, a psychology senior.
However, not everyone thinks people who died should not be able to have their opinions heard.
“I think their vote should count, because it’s not like they know they’re going to die, and they’re voting for the rest of us anyway,” said Joe Richardson, a mass communication senior.
However, Matt Beeson, a creative writing junior, thinks the legislation could be a political tool to prevent killing people who have one specific strong viewpoint.
“If dead people have a say in times of military and political upheaval, that’d be OK. It’s an incentive not to kill off all of one viewpoint,” Beeson said.
Others take a moral standpoint. Sarah Guthrie, an architecture senior, said if officials decide not to count the votes of people who died “it [would be] kind of disrespectful.”
Nevertheless, there are some who believe the bill would legalize a practice that has gone on for a long time.
“We have dead people voting all the time — pretending they’re someone else — rigging the elections, especially in Louisiana,” said Sara Gore, a French junior. “If it makes the system more simple, I don’t see why it’s a problem.”