What's happening
Writing a plain-English summary… Track this bill to get it by email.
Why it matters
Albany, before your first meeting.
Every bill that moved yesterday, summarized in a sentence and ranked by impact. The Albany Scorecard follows on Sundays.
Free. Unsubscribe in one click. Want alerts on specific bills? Create an account.
Who cares
Headline styles
Sponsors
No co-sponsors yet.
History
- Referred to rules
Companion bill
The same bill in the other chamber. A bill becomes law when one version passes both houses and the governor signs it, so either number can carry it.
Relates to the removal of a voter from voting rolls due to death
In Assembly Committee · Election Law · Sponsor Fred Thiele
Full text
The text isn't available here yet. Check nysenate.gov.
Sponsor's memo
BILL NUMBER:S7687
Title of bill
An act to amend the election law, in relation to removal of a voter from voting rolls due to death
Purpose of bill
The purpose of this bill is to ensure that the name of a deceased person is removed from the voting roll upon their death.
Summary of provisions
Section One amends article five of the election law as it pertains to the registration and enrollment of voters by adding a new section 5-714. The Board of Elections for each county and in the City of New York would be required to annually review the social security administration death master file and remove the names of any and all deceased voters. A safeguard exists to allow an individual to vote via affidavit ballot in the event that their name is erroneously removed from the voting roll.
Section Two contains the effective date.
Justification
The Election Law currently provides that the name of a voter must be removed from the registration roll upon their death. However, no mechanism exists to ensure that their name is in fact removed.
A new report by the Pew Center on the States finds that more than 1.8 million dead people are registered to vote throughout the country. This raises the concern that our election system may be vulnerable to fraud. It is imperative that our voters have confidence in our election system.
A study conducted by the Poughkeepsie Journal in October 2006 of the New York State voting database found that the list contained the names of as many as 77,000 deceased individuals, and that as many as 2,600 of them had cast votes from the grave. The analysis consisted of the matching of names, dates of birth, and zip codes of registered voters against the same information in the Social Security Administration "Death Master File".
This bill also protects voters who may be erroneously removed from the voter registration roll by allowing them to vote via an affidavit ballot in the same manner that an inactive voter would be permitted to vote.
While it is true that the New York City Department of Health and the New York State Department of Health currently transmit a list of deceased persons to the state board of elections, for removal from the list of eligible voters, this list is not compiled in real time, nor does it consist of the names of individuals who have died out of the state.
Fiscal implications
None to the State.
Prior legislative history
New Bill.
Effective date
This act shall take effect immediately.
Summaries, headlines and scores are AI-generated from the official bill text. How we score bills. Source: NYS Open Legislation.