Are you dead? Texas wants to know

Well, are you?

Texas sent out nearly 77,000 notices of “examination” this week to “comply with a 2011 law passed by the Legislature requiring the secretary of state’s office to cross-reference the voter rolls with the Social Security Administration’s enormous death master file to determine if a voter could be deceased.”

That’s a ton of confusion.

One Texan wondered why on Earth he was mistaken for deceased. Us too.

Michael Moore was surprised to receive a letter of examination last week. Skeptical of why the state might have considered him dead, Moore called the Travis County voter registrar and the secretary of state’s office but did not receive a specific answer about why the state thought he was dead.

Moore researches genealogy using Ancestry.com, which has access to the master death file. With his obscure middle name — which he declined to give the American-Statesman — Moore doesn’t understand how there could have been any confusion.

“The only Michael Moore on the list has a completely different (Social Security number), with same birthdate; he died in 1998. He was from Virginia,” Moore said.

So how much money does it cost to troll the Social Security Death Index, print up tens of thousands of letters and mail ‘em out in a macabre scattershot exercise to unearth the undead? Dunno, but voters are peeved.

In Harris County, the voter registrar sent out more than 9,000 letters, but, after receiving complaints from voters, decided to take no further action, according to the Houston Chronicle. The secretary of state’s office has threatened to cut voter registration funding to the county if it does not comply, the newspaper reported.

Good thing the Voter ID law was tossed. Can you imagine?

[via Statesman]