Bring out your dead (so they can vote)

A kind and loyal reader has brought my attention to this article from yesterday's Minneapolis Star-Tribune, which reports the fact that an elderly lady named Florence Steen passed away in South Dakota on May 11. Sad, but it happens every day in every state, and it isn't an unusual happening.

Until it screws up a vote for Hillary Clinton, that is.

The twist on the story is that the lady's family is upset that her absentee ballot won't be counted in the state's Democratic primary on June 3, more than three weeks after Ms. Steen died. It is apparently state law, sensibly in my view, that dead people cannot cast ballots, even when they've been filled out ahead of time, since, well, they are now deceased.

"'It meant a lot to her. It meant a lot to me. It was an inspirational story to me and to a lot of people,' Clinton pandered to the elderly told the Rapid City Journal." (Snarky comment mine)

I'm sorry to have to explain things to this grieving family, but I'll try to be gentle. Absentee ballots are for people who reside in the state, but who are absent from it on election day, or who are unable to get to the polls due to some infirmity. Some voters, however, do not qualify for such a ballot. People who move directly before an election, for example, and who are not registered in their new state in time to meet the election deadline are ineligible to vote because they are no longer residents of their previous state. Unfortunately, deceased people also fall into this category, as one can't be a resident of a place when they are dead (unless they live in Chicago). If we were to follow this sort of thinking too far, we would be having old and sick people attempt to fill out years of ballots in advance, and the whole situation would quickly become unworkable.

I'm sorry that the lady missed the cutoff, as it were, but that's how a sane electoral system works. Elections are for the living. I don't think that's too harsh of a limit to put on things.