Should ballots of dead voters count?

If you vote by mail, but die before Election Day, does your vote count? It depends on where you lived.

Oregon counts ballots no matter what happens to the voter. So does Florida. But in South Dakota, if you die before the election, so does your vote.

Increasingly popular mail-in ballots mean voters can now choose candidates up to 60 days before an election, raising new questions about an age-old phenomenon normally associated with chicanery in places like Chicago: What should be done with the ballots of the recently dead?

Laws in at least a dozen states are evenly split between tallying and dumping the votes. No one keeps records on how often such deaths occur.

Yet in this year's contentious campaign, the right of every American to a counted ballot has become a rallying cry — even if the voter dies before the tallying starts.

Florence Steen was an ailing 88-year-old grandmother born before women had the right to vote. One of her last wishes was to vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton. She wanted to be part of history, said her daughter Kathy Krause.

Steen was confined to a hospice bed in Rapid City, S.D., when she voted by absentee ballot weeks before the June 3 primary.

Steen died on Mother's Day. Her daughter took the ballot and dropped it in a mailbox. "In my mind, her vote counted,” Krause said.

But the county courthouse told Krause the ballot had to be tossed because state law declared a voter must be alive on Election Day.

"What about the soldiers in Iraq?” Krause said. "What if they vote and they're killed in action, God forbid? Should we take away their vote because they died for their country?”

There are no military standards governing voting by soldiers. Rather, their mailed-in ballots are counted at the individual election districts where they are registered to vote. But like civilian votes, no one keeps track of whether the ballots of soldiers are thrown out because they died after casting them.

Some say mail-in votes from people who die before Election Day should be counted, especially in rural elections, where races can hang on a few of votes.

South Dakota Secretary of State Chris Nelson said he doesn't know why a dead person's vote should count.

"You have to be a qualified voter on Election Day,” Nelson said. "I don't know how someone can say you're a qualified voter if you're deceased.”

Pam Smith, director of the advocacy group Verified Voting, disagrees: "By definition, the day you cast a ballot is Election Day. That's it.”