Election officials estimate that approximately 20,000 dead people registered to vote in Virginia.

Virginia officials announced this week that they found nearly 20,000 dead people registered to vote as they look for ways to clean up the voter rolls. 

The Virginia Department of Elections made the discovery public on Monday. It stated that election officials had discovered 18, 990 dead people on the voter rolls, a mistake that was referred to as” computer coding error.”

According to Virginia elections director Susan Beals, there was a personal coding error that missed the time between the death certificate’s’s date and the date it was reported. ” We are developing a new nationwide voter registration procedure, and I want to make sure that the information we enter into that product is as accurate as it is possible to be.”

Beals claimed that the details may be taken off the rolls and that she was unaware of how serious the issue was. According to the neighborhood outlet WTOP, Beals said,” I knew there was something there, but I didn’t know it was this small.”

To update the system, the elections department claimed to have obtained death records from the Virginia Department of Health that go back to 1960. Members can anticipate seeing a sizable number of names removed from Virginia’s’s voting rolls in light of these findings and system benefits, according to an official department press release.

As the say updates its procedure, including giving local registrars more authority to remove dead people, the dying voters were found. The streamlined procedure will make it possible to remove a voter from the system using an article or life member’s’s alert, which in the past required an official death certificate.

Beals stated that” we have made it simpler to find and destroy deceased voters more quickly.” Really, this is something that clerks have asked for.

Additionally, the state elections division stated that it would be working to streamline the procedure for owners of Virginia who reside in regions that border some states, such as West Virginia and Tennessee or Washington, D.C.

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Common registrars may just check to see if the death of a registered voter took place outside of the Commonwealth using data from the national database. Virginia voters who passed away in out-of-state hospitals or facilities have historically been difficult for common registrars to confirm, according to the bureau.

Governor Glenn Youngkin ( R – VA ) appointed Beals to lead the department in March 2022. She had hitherto held positions on the Chesterfield Electoral Board and for a number of Virginia Republicans.

Beals declared in a statement at the time,” I am committed to advancing and supporting safe, appropriate, empty, and fair votes in the Commonwealth of Virginia.” ” I will make an effort to accomplish the objectives of the department’s’s strategic plan, which aims to boost voting confidence in the voting system and improve election security for the Commonwealth.”