Ahead of special election, LA County voter receives ballot for person who died 31 years ago

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- A Los Angeles County registered voter received his ballot in the mail for next month's special election -- along with a ballot for a woman who died in 1994.

Some 5.8 million ballots have been mailed out to every registered voter in the county ahead of the Nov. 4 election.

L.A. resident Jeff Barry and his wife each received their respective ballot, along with a third ballot for someone they don't know, Winona M. McGuire.

"It was not the family from whom we bought the house last spring, and I wasn't familiar with it, and so I Googled it, and I was a bit surprised by what I found," said Barry.

He discovered the person's name on the third ballot was a woman who passed away back in 1994. Not knowing what to do with the ballot, Barry reached out to Eyewitness News, who also verified that Winona M. McGuire has been dead for 31 years.

"I was just sort of bewildered as to how I received her ballot. It's not like she died a year or two ago. She died in L.A. County over 30 years ago, and she's still on the voter rolls," said Barry.

At this point, there's no evidence that Winona M. McGuire's name has been used to vote in L.A. County since her death. According to election officials, voter fraud remains very rare, not occurring at a level that would change an election result.

"When you vote and return that ballot, you have to sign a legal oath. We can check the signatures on those ballots before they're cleared for counting, so there are protections. Forging a ballot is a felony offense, so we take that very seriously, and we would refer that to the district attorney," said L.A. County Registrar Dean Logan.

Logan says if you receive a ballot at your address that's addressed to someone else, you should write on the envelope, "No longer resides here" or "Voter not here," and have it returned to the sender. The county will then update its records.

"We can certainly verify if there's been voting history in that time period. We do get notifications from the State Department of Public Health and from the Social Security Administration about deaths, but sometimes that information is difficult to match to a record, and we want to be very careful when you're talking about cancelling somebody's registration," said Logan.

Besides returning the ballot to the county, the registrar wants to hear specific information on a voter if you have it, especially if someone has passed away, so they can begin the process of removing their voter registration.

In a statement, the L.A. County Registrar's Office said:

"Our review identified two data discrepancies that contributed to the registration record remaining active: a spacing variance in the last name between the voter registration and vital record records, and a discrepancy in the date of birth.

Due to these data mismatches and the fact that no election materials were ever returned or any notice provided to our office, the record has remained unchanged until now. The record has since been canceled. This is a fringe circumstance where the data did not align precisely enough to trigger the automatic cancellation process for deceased voters.

Los Angeles County conducts ongoing voter roll maintenance in accordance with state and federal law, using multiple data sources - including vital records, change of address information, and returned election mail - to ensure the voter file remains accurate and up to date. This case reflects the scale and complexity of maintaining one of the largest voter registration databases in the country."